Earlier this week, the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario released a new report, Special Education Needs: Performance Audit, which identified significant gaps and inconsistencies across the province.
One major area of concern was the quality of Individual Education Plans (IEPs), with many found to be overly generic and lacking specific information about students’ current needs and goals. The Auditor General found that at least 90% of the annual learning goals reviewed “lacked measurable criteria, limiting the ability to assess students’ progress.”
For students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties, the need for specific and measurable goals is especially important. Reading intervention should focus on clearly defined skill areas identified through screening and diagnostic assessment data, with measurable goals designed to help students close skill gaps and move toward grade-level expectations. During the intervention, progress should be regularly monitored using valid and reliable measures to ensure the student is on track to meet the goal, allowing adjustments to be made quickly before valuable time is lost.
The Auditor General’s findings suggest that in Ontario, at least 90% of the time, students do not have measurable intervention goals. Without those goals and reliable data showing whether students are meeting them, there is no meaningful way to know whether interventions are effective. This is harmful for students, who may spend months or years in ineffective interventions, and for school boards, which lack the information needed to ensure funding is being invested wisely.
Dyslexia Canada has long advocated for the province to create a policy on reading intervention that establishes consistent processes for determining which students receive intervention, setting measurable skill-based goals, aligning interventions with students’ needs, monitoring progress, and communicating clearly with parents. These were all key recommendations of the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read Inquiry that have yet to be implemented.
We strongly urge the Minister to create a provincial reading intervention policy that includes the following consolidated recommendations from the Right to Read Inquiry:
Mandate the use of data to plan and monitor intervention: The Ministry must require school boards to use valid and reliable data to do the following:
- Identify students who need support: Intervention decisions should be based on objective criteria tied to assessment data.
- Determine the specific skill(s) the student needs support with: Interventions must be strategically chosen to match the student’s needs. Provincial policy should establish a clear process for identifying target skills using screening data and selecting programs or strategies with strong evidence of effectiveness at improving the target skill. The one-size-fits-all approach seen in many boards is not effective.
- Set ambitious intervention goals: Too often, intervention goals are vague or set so low that, if achieved, they would result in a wider gap between the student’s score and the grade-level benchmarks. The Ministry should require educators to set clear, measurable goals for outcome scores on provincially approved screening tools that, if met, would result in the student narrowing the gap or achieving grade-level benchmarks.
- Track student progress toward the goal: During intervention, students should have frequent progress monitoring assessments to ensure they are on track to meet the goal. The screening tools the province has selected include quick (one-minute) standardized progress monitoring probes that are intended to be used for this purpose; however, very few school boards are currently using them. Intervention goals and progress monitoring updates should be shared with families to ensure transparency and accountability.
Monitor intervention delivery and impact through standardized provincial data collection: The Ministry should require school boards to monitor intervention delivery and student progress internally and report to the province the following information for each student receiving reading intervention:
- Baseline scores: Students’ scores on valid and reliable assessments before intervention.
- Details of the intervention provided: Including the target skill(s), name of the intervention program or strategy, number of sessions completed by the student, approximate number of instructional minutes per session, setting (in-class or withdrawal support), and group size.
- Outcome scores: Students’ scores on valid and reliable assessments after intervention. Comparing these scores to pre-intervention scores will allow parents and educators to understand whether the intervention was effective for the student.
Use data to evaluate program effectiveness and guide system improvement: School boards and the Ministry should regularly analyze pre- and post-intervention data to evaluate which programs and approaches are producing measurable gains for students. This information is essential for guiding system improvement, strengthening accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed toward the interventions with the greatest impact.
The concerns raised by the Auditor General make it clear that Ontario’s current approach to intervention and special education accountability is not meeting the needs of many students. For students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties, the province has made important progress since the Right to Read Inquiry through changes to the Language Curriculum and the implementation of universal early reading screening. Now it is time to create a clear provincial reading intervention policy to ensure screening data is used effectively to help all students develop the critical foundational literacy skills at the heart of the new curriculum.
For educators and families interested in improving the quality of academic IEP goals, we strongly encourage reading Strategies for Setting High-Quality Academic IEP Goals, which provides practical guidance on writing specific, measurable, and meaningful goals that support student success.