Importance of Goal Ambitiousness and Goal Mastery to Student Achievement

The purpose of this study was to explore how student achievement relates to ambitiousness of goal setting and to goal mastery. The subjects were 58 special education students for whom teachers assessed baseline performance and set reading goals employing a standard format. On the basis of the relation between baseline and the anticipated goal performance, students were assigned to goal ambitiousness groups. For 18 weeks, teachers implemented students' goals, end-of-treatment goal mastery was determined, and pretest and posttest achievement scores were entered into multivariate and univariate analyses of covariance, with pretest reading scores as the covariate. Analyses revealed that ambitiousness of goals was associated positively with achievement; goal mastery was not. Implications for goal setting and IEP evaluation procedures are discussed.