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 the broadest reviewed state-specific coverage, including timeline, terminology, and parent-rights guidance. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have selected reviewed rights topics and official-source guides; these are not complete state coverage. The other 45 states and the District of Columbia use federal guidance in AI answers until their state sources are reviewed and promoted. The state resources browser also provides a source-linked review edition for all 50 states and D.C.; these new guides cover named topics and are labeled as awaiting independent review. Their source snapshots do not become approved AI sources automatically. Check the coverage note for your selected state and verify local requirements with the linked official sources.
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 is designed not to give legal advice. "Educational reference, not legal advice" is the line we draw. The advisor uses collaboration-first language and is instructed not to say "you are entitled to X" or "the district violated Y." User-facing outputs also pass a runtime check for high-risk legal conclusions before they are shown.
- It is instructed not to invent regulations. Rights Q&A citations are checked against the curated knowledge base, but AI can still make mistakes. Verify important legal details with the cited source or a qualified professional.
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
PrepIEP is available to families nationwide. Deeper state-specific guidance is added only after official source-pack review. If your state isn't covered in depth yet, the advisor will remind you to verify state-specific timelines, forms, and dispute processes with your district or local PTI center.