Are Goal Banks the Right Solution for Teachers?

We are frequently asked about goal banks, and specifically how EdMod is similar to or different from a goal bank. Let’s just get this out of the way: EdMod is very different from a goal bank; in fact, we’re not huge fans of goal banks. Let’s explain:

When we were educators in the classroom, we used goal banks. In theory, they saved us time because someone else had already written the goals and we just needed to find the right one for the student(s) we were serving. That’s the theory. But there’s a number of problems with relying on goal banks.

Problem #1: They don’t necessarily save time.  If you Google, “goal bank,” you get 313 million responses, and even weeding through the first couple of pages in the search results is overwhelming. Some of the banks are free, provided by non-profits; some are commercial products that require a paid (in some cases very hefty) subscription; some of them are within blog posts by teachers who want to share their hard work to help other teachers. So the first problem with goal banks is how many there are and trying to find ones that actually work for your needs. Does it save you time? Maybe not so much. 

Problem #2: They encourage goal copying rather than goal writing. With goal banks, you’re effectively copy-pasting a goal someone else has written. It’s possible this goal is perfect for the child in question; but it’s much more likely that the goal requires tweaking & editing to meet the needs of the student at hand. And this gets to the core issue for us and why we don’t actually think goal banks are the right solution for teachers: in order for goals to be effective, they need to be understood by the teacher. In order for them to be understood by the teacher, they need to be written by the teacher. Copy-pasting someone else’s goal written for a different child doesn’t accomplish this. 

Problem #3: Goal banks don’t help with data collection. Goal banks only attempt to solve part of the problem. The other part of the problem is how to collect data and progress-monitor once the goal has been written. Goal banks don’t address this. We survey teachers and administrators all over the country, in schools that vary from urban to rural, and everything in between, and what we hear nearly universally is that teachers do not have a uniform set of tools to use to progress-monitor, and administrators have no way of keeping track of who’s using what.

Does this mean teachers should be left to their own devices to write their own goals with no support? Absolutely not! Goal-writing is hard and teachers don’t receive nearly enough support in this area. We believe the solution is to leverage technology to scaffold goal-writing for teachers, to support them in writing high quality goals for their students. 

Using Education Modified, teachers don’t access a goal bank. Rather, the app (using some light-touch AI) helps a teacher walk through the creation of their own goals. After teachers take a stab at writing their goal, the platform walks the teacher through a “wizard” to make sure the goal is properly written. For example:

If I write the goal, “Penelope will identify the root word, prefix and suffix,” the app recognizes that this is not a complete goal because it lacks a success target, timeframe, and measurement tool.  The tool then gently prompts me for more information. I am prompted to tag goals to academic or functional categories, then set up data collection processes for each goal- this streamlines my work flow to make sure the goal is measurable, as well as gives me tools to measure it. 

In sum, at EdMod we believe we can do better than goal banks and that technology-based scaffolding of the goal creation process is the best solution for teachers — and for students. 

To learn more about Education Modified’s goal scaffolding, data collection and progress monitoring tools, email us at info@educationmodified.com and we’d be happy to find time to provide you or your team with a product demonstration.