How PrepIEP works (and what it doesn't do)
Educational reference, not legal advice. PrepIEP surfaces patterns and questions for you to raise with your IEP team. Educational reference, not legal advice.
What the AI does
When you upload an IEP, PrepIEP runs a structured extraction pass that pulls out the elements an IEP team is responsible for committing to:
- Student profile — name, grade, school, disability category, present levels of performance, IEP start and end dates.
- Goals — each goal's domain, baseline, measurement method, success criterion, timeline, and benchmarks. Every goal carries a confidence score so you know how clearly the document supports the extraction.
- Services — type (speech, OT, counseling, etc.), provider, frequency, duration, location, and whether each service is specified clearly enough to deliver.
- Accommodations — what the team has agreed to provide, categorized as instructional, environmental, or assessment, and whether the wording is operational (something a teacher can actually do).
- Progress reporting — how often and by what method the school will report progress on goals.
The advisor then flags goals that lack a baseline, a measurement method, or a success criterion (the standard "SMART" criteria), accommodations that are vague enough to be unenforceable, and services without a clear frequency. It does not invent flags; everything traces back to text in the document.
When you ask a question, the advisor retrieves from a curated knowledge base of Massachusetts special-education guidance — DESE policy memos, Chapter 766, the Notice of Procedural Safeguards, the Bureau of Special Education Appeals (BSEA) process, IEE entitlements, and the Prior Written Notice / N1 process — and grounds its answer in your child's specific document plus that knowledge base.
What the AI doesn't do
We are deliberate about what PrepIEP will not do, because the cost of pretending otherwise is real:
- It will not write your appeal. Drafting a due-process complaint, a state complaint, or a BSEA hearing request is the work of a special-education attorney or trained advocate. The advisor will tell you when your situation has crossed that line.
- It will not predict BSEA outcomes. Hearings turn on facts, expert testimony, and judicial discretion. No AI can responsibly forecast that.
- It will not replace an advocate. If your case needs an advocate, the advisor will say so and point you toward Massachusetts Advocates for Children, the Federation for Children with Special Needs, or your local PTI center.
- It will not give legal advice. "Educational reference, not legal advice" is not a hedge — it is the line we draw. The advisor uses collaboration-first language and explicitly does not say "you are entitled to X" or "the district violated Y."
- It will not invent regulations. Every citation comes from the curated knowledge base; the advisor is instructed never to fabricate statutes, case names, or quoted regulatory text.
Where the knowledge base comes from
The Rights Q&A knowledge base is curated, not crawled. Sources include:
- 34 CFR Part 300 — the federal IDEA regulations.
- 603 CMR 28 (Massachusetts Special Education regulations, "Chapter 766").
- DESE Policy Memo SY2024-2025-7 — Independent Educational Evaluations (IEEs).
- DESE Notice of Procedural Safeguards — parental rights.
- Bureau of Special Education Appeals (BSEA) — hearing rules and recent decisions.
- DESE 2023–24 revised IEP form — the current form Massachusetts schools use.
We re-ingest the knowledge base whenever the underlying source publishes a meaningful change (form revisions, new policy memos, BSEA rules updates). The advisor will not cite a source that isn't in this base.
How extraction confidence works
Each extracted goal, service, and accommodation carries a confidence label — high, medium, or low. High means the document states the field clearly; medium means we inferred it from nearby context; low means the document is ambiguous and you should verify with the team. The advisor surfaces low-confidence items first so you don't walk into the meeting trusting a guess.
Privacy and the no-training commitment
Your child's documents are encrypted in transit and at rest. We do not use your data to train AI models — full stop. Subprocessors are listed on the Subprocessors page, and the binding no-AI-training commitment is in the Privacy Policy.
Geographic scope
Currently MA-specific guidance plus federal IDEA defaults. State overlays expanding throughout 2026. If you're outside Massachusetts, the advisor will fall back to federal IDEA defaults and remind you to verify state-specific timelines and forms with your district or local PTI center.