Why You're Not a Bad Goal Writer (You Just Need Rubric-Based Speech Therapy Goals)
You sit down to write IEP goals, and your stomach drops.
Again.
You stare at the blank page, toggle over to Google, and search for yet another goal bank that might, just might, capture what you're actually working on with your autistic students. But nothing fits. Nothing reflects the child-led, neuroaffirming work you're doing in sessions. You're left feeling like you're failing at something that should be foundational to your job.
But please hear me when I say, you're not a bad goal writer.
You've just been handed one very narrow, outdated system and told to make it work for students it was never designed to support.
In this post, I'm breaking down why traditional goal writing fails our autistic students, the three mindset shifts that changed everything for me, and how rubric-based speech therapy goals can help you write goals that actually reflect meaningful, child-led progress without the struggle.
For years, I told myself I was terrible at goal writing. I'd spend hours agonizing over every IEP, convinced that everyone else had figured out some secret I'd missed. I avoided it. I dreaded it and I felt like an impostor because writing goals just didn't come naturally to me. But then I finally realized that the issue wasn't that I was bad at goal writing. The issue was that I was trying to force my autistic students' communication into a box that doesn't actually reflect progress for them.
When we write goals like "Johnny will request items with 80% accuracy in 8 out of 10 opportunities," we're setting ourselves up to engineer contrived situations where we can collect data. We're not supporting authentic communication — we're setting up trials and then we wonder why those skills don't generalize outside our sessions.
Communication can't be "accurate" or "inaccurate." Who am I to judge whether something is accurate when it comes from another person? That's what they chose to say. That's how they chose to say it. If I made you say it, it's not communication — it's compliance.
Rubric-Based Goals for Autistic Students
A few years ago, a mentor introduced me to rubric-based speech therapy goals, and everything changed. At first, I was skeptical. I thought rubrics were just the "easy way out" and basically a shortcut for people who couldn't write "real" goals. But once I started using them with my autistic students, especially those who were multimodal communicators, gestalt language processors, or using AAC, I realized rubrics weren't a cheat code. They were the right tool for the job. And once I got clear on my process, I could write a rubric goal in minutes, not hours.
Rubric-based IEP goals allow you to:
- Track progress across multiple modalities (gestures, AAC, echolalia, emerging speech)
- Honor the child's autonomy and natural communication development
- Write goals that support a child-led speech therapy approach
- Measure meaningful progress without forcing communication into percentages
- Explain your goals clearly to families, teams, and administrators
3 Mindset Shifts That Changed How I Write Goals
Mindset Shift #1: It's Okay for Things to Feel Easy
I used to think that if goal writing felt easy, I must be doing it wrong. Goal writing was supposed to be hard, technical, and exhausting. But when I started writing rubric goals, they felt... simple. And that made me uncomfortable. A mentor once told me, "It's okay for things to feel easy." That hit me hard because I had spent years believing that if I wasn't grinding it out, I wasn't doing good work. But if something feels easy, it probably means you've worked hard enough on it to experience ease. Rubric-based speech therapy goals feel easy to me now because I've mastered them.
Mindset Shift #2: You're Not a Bad Goal Writer (You Were Just Given the Wrong Tools)
Most of us were taught one way to write goals: the 80% accuracy in 8 out of 10 trials format. Then we were told to apply it to everything including autistic communication. But that model doesn't work for supporting autistic kids, especially when you're working on spontaneous, authentic, multimodal communication. You can't measure connection with a percentage or a trial count. We're not bad goal writers. We're professionals trying to use a broken system with very little support. And when we realize that, we can stop blaming ourselves and start using tools that actually fit.
Mindset Shift #3: You Can Question the Rules
One of the biggest barriers I hear from clinicians is: "I want to try rubrics, but my admin won't go for it." Here's what I know: IEPs and goals are meant to be individualized. You have the right and the responsibility to write goals that reflect what your student actually needs, not what admin decided was easiest. Most of the time, when clinicians present rubric goals with confidence and clarity, supervisors are supportive. And even if they're not at first, you can advocate. You can explain. You can stand up for what's right for your students. Questioning outdated practices isn't being difficult, it's being a good clinician.
How Rubric-Based Progress Monitoring Works
Here's a quick overview of how I approach rubric-based goals:
Step 1: Identify the communication skill or function you're targeting: So for example: Requesting, commenting, protesting, etc.)
Step 2: Define what that skill looks like across multiple levels: Instead of "with 80% accuracy," describe what emerging, developing, and independent communication look like for *this* child.
Step 3: Write the rubric so it honors all modalities: Include gestures, facial expressions, AAC, echolalia, and spoken language as valid forms of communication.
Step 4: Use the rubric to track progress over time: You're not counting trials, you're describing growth in a way that's functional, flexible, and meaningful.
Why Rubrics Work for Child-Led Therapy
When your goals are rubric-based, your sessions can be truly child-led. You're not scrambling to engineer 10 trials of a specific behavior. You're not withholding preferred items to force a request. You're simply following the child's lead, modeling language naturally, and observing how they're communicating. When you remove the pressure, communication flourishes.
Your rubric captures that growth, whether it's a new gesture, a shift from a stage one gestalt to flexible language, or increased initiation using AAC. You're measuring what matters, not what's easy to count.
So friends, if you take anything away from this blog post, I hope it’s these messages. You're not a bad goal writer, you've just been using tools that don't fit the work you're doing with autistic students. Rubric-based speech therapy goals allow you to measure meaningful progress across multiple communication modalities without forcing compliance. Child-led therapy and rubric goals go hand in hand because they both honor autonomy, trust, and authentic communication. It's okay for things to feel easy. If rubrics feel simple, that's a sign you're doing it right. You can question the status quo. Advocating for rubric goals is advocating for your students.
If you've been struggling with goal writing, know that you're not alone. And know that there's a better way, one that aligns with your values, honors your students, and makes your job easier, not harder. I created a Quick Start Guide to Rubric Writing that’s 100% free, because I want everyone to be able to utilize rubric based goals in their practice (but not stress about how to get started!). You can download the free Quick Start Guide to Rubric Writing here!
