At the turn of the century education has seen a standards based reform movement, e.g NCLB. IDEA 2004 reflects this with a change in the focus of an IEP towards curriculum standards. What does this mean? The focus of academic based IEP goals and objectives should be strictly aligned with the curriculum standards. This helps to make the general curriculum accessible for all students – to the extent possible.
For example, in the past a math IEP objective may be written based on weaknesses found in psychological tests regardless if this was in the curriculum covered in the life of the new IEP. Maybe a student had trouble with calculations with fractions on the testing so an objective would focus on improving these types of calculations even if the class was not going to cover calculations with fractions.
These new types of IEPs are called Standards Based IEPs. Here are a couple of links.