Target mastery and ABA program completion are different decisions. Target mastery means a defined exemplar or response met its criterion under named conditions. Program completion asks whether the broader, person-centered goal has been addressed across relevant examples, settings, people, supports, generalization, and maintenance. A dashboard can track both states. Only qualified roles should decide clinical progression using the governing plan and the person's input.

Define the target unit

State the exact exemplar, response, prompt condition, materials, partner, setting, and performance criterion.

Define the program outcome

Describe the broader useful capability, client priority, contexts, supports, and limits that give the program purpose.

Map each target to that outcome

Show which component a target addresses and which generalization or maintenance questions remain open.

Keep status fields separate

Use acquired, generalized, maintained, transitioned, and program complete as distinct decisions with owners and dates.

Review necessity and burden

Ask whether further targets add meaningful value or consume time better spent on the person's other goals.

Build Elena's target-to-program completion map

For the target mastery versus program completion ABA question, create a versioned target-to-program completion map. Preserve the target, client-selected purpose, operational response, accepted communication forms, eligible opportunities, observation time, numerator, denominator, independence, prompts, context, partners, materials, criterion, teaching history, generalization, maintenance, access, safety, decision owner, actual transition, and follow-up. Another qualified reviewer should be able to reconstruct Elena's result without guessing what counted.

Work through Elena's mastery example

Elena correctly sorts one trained set of red and blue blocks in 9 of 10 opportunities across two sessions. That target meets its rule. Her program also includes household objects, classroom materials, varied positions, and choosing when categories matter. Those components remain unmeasured, so the program stays active even though one target is mastered. Show raw counts and every relevant cell or date before adding percentages. This fictional preschool categorization program example illustrates one decision pattern and does not establish a universal mastery level, observation count, probe schedule, treatment plan, or transition rule.

Audit Elena's source evidence

Elena's map links each target to the broader functional outcome and records trained versus untrained examples, generalization, maintenance, client interest, and supports. It prevents a completed target row from automatically closing the program. The audit also checks definition and criterion versions, data-entry history, invalid and missing states, opportunity selection, observer agreement when useful, graph or table calculations, prompt coding, teaching integrity, and corrections. Unresolved discrepancies stay visible and pause any transition that depends on them.

Address Elena's main decision risk

Counting many narrow targets can create an appearance of progress while everyday usefulness remains uncertain. Elena's team reviews whether the program serves her priorities and whether the task belongs in her daily life. A dashboard can calculate and surface evidence. It cannot decide that a skill is meaningful, safe, generalized, maintained, or complete. Those judgments belong to the person and qualified roles under the applicable plan and authority.

Choose Elena's next step

The clinician can add relevant examples, revise the goal, transition to natural supports, or close the program with rationale. Completion never requires removing AAC, visual supports, or accommodations that remain useful. Record the decision, rationale, owner, date, support plan, and review trigger. Keep acquisition, generalization, maintenance, and clinical value as separate evidence so one favorable state cannot silently satisfy another.

Protect Elena's access and choice

Keep Elena's AAC, interpreters, mobility, food, water, bathroom use, prescribed care, health support, rest, relationships, and emergency help available. Ordinary communication, sensory, visual, and mobility supports remain present during teaching and probes unless the defined question concerns one support and qualified review approves the safe comparison. Use accessible consent and assent processes when applicable and respond to withdrawal, dissent, or distress.

Apply current sources to Elena's review

Elena's instructional-design source distinguishes the scope assigned to a target from the broader scope chosen for a skill or program. The BACB ethics hub and CASP public summary provide professional context, while the BCBA Test Content Outline identifies examination content on measurement and skill acquisition. The WWC handbook supplies research-design context. A mastery and maintenance review, a replication of criterion effects, and a preliminary criterion analysis show that criterion details can affect later responding and remain incompletely standardized. A generalization case study and ABA instructional-design paper address purposeful planning. ASHA supports continuous AAC access.

Rehearse Elena's decision rule

Test the target-to-program completion map with fictional cases containing 0 of 0 opportunities, a perfect 2 of 2, unequal session denominators, prompted success, a missing session, a weak context, an overdue probe, and a system-access failure. Confirm that statuses, denominators, holds, calculations, and review routes behave as intended. Store expected outputs, software version, reviewer notes, and the correction log before the rule touches live data.

Close Elena's mastery review

Review the target-to-program completion map with Elena, the responsible clinician, and other specialists required by the target. Preserve raw data, active criterion, teaching context, client input, access and safety evidence, generalization, maintenance, qualified decision, actual transition, exceptions, and later outcomes. Keep the page draft and noindex until every manifest-named review is complete.

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