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 filtered to your meeting's state plus federal IDEA sources. Massachusetts has reviewed state-specific guidance today; other states stay on federal fallback until their official source packs are reviewed and promoted.
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 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 hearing 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 your local PTI center or a qualified special-education advocate.
- 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. Reviewed sources currently 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, dispute-resolution updates). The advisor will not cite a source that isn't in this base, and it will not use another state's source pack for your meeting.
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
Federal IDEA fallback is available nationwide. Reviewed state overlays are added only after official source-pack review. If your state is still on fallback, the advisor will remind you to verify state-specific timelines, forms, and dispute processes with your district or local PTI center.