User Guide

Nothing in this app is legal advice, and nothing is ever sent to your school district automatically. You review and approve everything -- including anything AI helps draft or summarize -- before it's saved or sent.

Most of the app -- tracking deadlines, entering goals/services by hand, Findings, letters you draft yourself, the whole Guide -- is free. The AI-powered tools that read and generate content for you (auto-fill, the evaluation summary, both "ask a question" features, AI letter drafting, resume polish, kid-friendly wording) are part of a paid plan. One exception worth knowing: quick translated summaries and full document translation are each free up to a monthly limit (see Plans for the exact numbers) before either needs a plan too.

Getting started

1. Create your account

Just an email and a password. No credit card needed to start -- the paid plan only comes up when you try an AI-powered feature (see the note above).

2. Add your child's profile

Just a name, state, and a few key dates if you have them handy -- you can always add these later. This takes under a minute and doesn't require any documents yet.

3. Upload a document

The fastest way to get useful information into the app is to upload an IEP, an evaluation report, or a Prior Written Notice (PWN) as a PDF (or a photo, for a document you don't have as a PDF). See Documents & auto-fill below for exactly what happens next.

Don't have a document handy, or prefer not to upload one? You can add dates, goals, and services by hand instead on the child's own page -- uploading is the fast path, not the only path.

4. Look around

Every child's page is organized into four hubs, always in the same tab bar: the child's own page (dates, documents, the actual IEP content), the Advocacy Center (everything about actively pursuing something with the district), Your Roadmap (what to do at your child's current stage, from entering special education through life after high school), and the Guide (general rights/legal reference, not specific to your child's own documents). This walkthrough follows that same order.

Wherever you are in the app, click the "IEP Navigator" name and icon in the upper-left corner to jump straight back to your home page.

Your child's page

This is home base. A few things worth knowing:

• IEP Snapshot -- an at-a-glance summary: disability category, current placement stage, and upcoming deadlines.
• Timeline & Deadlines -- every legal deadline that applies to your child in your state, computed from the dates on file and cited to the actual law or rule behind it, not a guess. Downloadable as a calendar file (.ics) you can import into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook, so reminders show up where you already look.
• IEP Details / Evaluation Details -- the actual goals, services, accommodations, and evaluation findings on file, editable directly.
• Search -- free-text search across everything entered for this child: goals, services, accommodations, and documents.
• Compare Documents -- pick two previously uploaded documents (say, last year's IEP and this year's) and see what changed in their goals, services, and accommodations -- grouped into continued, no-longer-present, and new. It compares the structured items saved from those two documents, not a raw side-by-side of the whole text.

Multiple kids? A dropdown near the top of the page switches between them without going back to the dashboard.

Documents & auto-fill

Uploading a document is the fast path into the app. Here's exactly what happens once you do.

Uploading documents

Choose one file or several at once -- there's no limit worth worrying about, so it's fine to grab every PDF you have and upload them all together.

• The Document type and school year fields above the upload button are just a fallback, not a label you're applying to everything you selected. Each file is scanned and typed on its own the moment it's uploaded -- an IEP, a Prior Written Notice, and an evaluation report uploaded together in the same batch each still land correctly typed. The dropdown's value is only used for a specific file the app genuinely can't classify from its own content.
• You never have to sort files by type before uploading, or upload them one at a time to "get the type right" -- one upload, whatever mix of documents, is the normal way to use this.
• Got it wrong anyway, or want to correct a guess? Every document's type and school year can be edited afterward from its own entry on your child's page.

Auto-fill from documents (the main flow)

One button scans every document you've uploaded at once and pulls out everything it can find -- dates, goals, services, accommodations, and progress notes -- into a single review page, so you don't have to guess which document has which piece of information.

• Only documents that haven't been scanned before are scanned -- revisiting this page won't re-scan (or re-charge for) anything already incorporated. A "re-scan everything anyway" option is there if you specifically want a full do-over.
• Everything found is tagged with which file it came from, and grouped: dates & disability category, goals, services, accommodations & modifications, progress updates, and document summaries.
• Nothing saves automatically. Every item has a checkbox (pre-checked) and an editable text box -- fix a typo, correct a date, or uncheck anything that looks wrong before saving.
• Items worth a second look are floated to the top of their section so they're not buried.
• If something found looks like an updated version of a goal/service/accommodation you already have saved, a "this updates an existing one" checkbox links them together instead of creating a confusing duplicate.

Evaluation summary -- the plain-language walkthrough

This is the one worth knowing about even if you use nothing else: click "Plain-language summary" on an uploaded evaluation report, and the app produces a genuine walkthrough of the whole document in plain English -- not just extracted fields.

• The big picture -- a short paragraph that's the actual key takeaway: what kind of evaluation this was and the overall picture it paints, synthesized across every section, not a list of raw numbers.
• Section by section -- one card per area the evaluation actually covered (cognitive testing, reading achievement, speech/language, social-emotional, classroom observation, whatever applies), each with a plain-English explanation of what it found and what it means, plus "what the scores mean" in everyday terms -- without the app trying to judge severity or next steps for you; that stays with the evaluator.

It's generated once and saved, so coming back later shows the same version rather than re-generating it -- there's a "generate a fresh one instead" button if you want to try again. This page is read-only (nothing to approve or reject here; it's a standalone explainer, not something that feeds into your child's saved record), and it's clearly labeled as AI-generated and unreviewed -- a companion to reading the real report, not a replacement for it. Print or save it as a PDF right from the page.

Translate a document

Under each uploaded document: a language dropdown (Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Hmong, or Somali) and two buttons.

• Translate full document -- the entire document, start to finish.
• Quick translated summary -- just the short plain-language summary (and, for evaluations/PWNs, the key facts), faster than the full translation. A companion to it, never a replacement.

This is done by AI, not a certified human translator -- every translated page says so, in that same language, and suggests asking your school for a qualified interpreter before relying on it for a real decision (Hmong and Somali are flagged as lower-confidence). School/district names are always kept in English so you can still recognize and contact them. You can save translations in several languages for the same document at once.

Reviewing one document at a time

Alongside the combined auto-fill flow above, each document also has its own individual review links, for when you want to handle just one document in isolation:

• Review key fields -- dates and disability category from this one document. Any date the app couldn't verify as genuinely appearing in the document's own text is flagged so you double-check it before it drives a deadline.
• Review goals & accommodations -- goals, services, accommodations, and a summary from this one document.
• Review "Need to Know" -- for evaluations and Prior Written Notices only. For a PWN, this is the 7 legally-required elements (what was proposed/refused, the reason, evaluation basis, your procedural safeguards, other options considered, other factors), each individually reviewable. For an evaluation, it's the eligibility determination and key findings.
• Review progress report -- for progress-report documents only; you pick which goal each entry belongs to from a suggested dropdown, rather than the app guessing automatically.

Asking a question

There are two different "ask a question" boxes in the app, and they answer different things:

Simple rule of thumb: if the answer would be the same for any family in your state, use the Guide. If it's about what your own child's documents say, search your child's page first -- "Ask AI" is there if the search itself doesn't find it. Either way, if the app isn't confident it has a real answer, it says so instead of guessing.

Advocacy Center

Everything related to actively advocating for your child. Here's what each tab is for:

• Findings -- the app checking its own math for you, comparing the dates and documents you've entered against your state's actual legal requirements, and flagging anything overdue, incomplete, or worth a second look (missed deadlines, incomplete PWNs, documents that disagree about a date, and more). When there's something to act on, it also points you to your state's free Parent Training and Information Center. A finding is never a determination that your district broke the law -- it's built entirely from what you've told the app, and clears on its own once you fix or add the missing information. Compliance Audit is the "show your work" version alongside it: every procedural requirement that applies to your child, including the ones that are currently fine, not just the problems.
• Team & Contacts -- who's on your child's IEP team, their role, and their contact info in one place.
• Meeting Prep -- your own priority list for the next meeting, notes and action items from meetings already had, and a card of specific phrases for tricky moments in the room (not sure what to say if you think the team already decided without you? It's there). Tip: write the actual sentence you plan to say into a goal's details, not just a note to yourself -- it's easier to say something out loud in the meeting once you've already said it once here.
• Timeline -- the same deadline view as your child's own page, here in the advocacy context.
• Communication Log -- a record of calls, emails, and meetings with the school, with follow-up reminders for anything you're still waiting to hear back on.
• Behavior Log -- incidents and wins, restraint/seclusion tracking with real legal deadlines, and a place to log an informal removal -- a pickup call or being sent home that the school never formally called a suspension. These can still count toward a federal 10-day disciplinary threshold even when the school doesn't call it that, so it's worth logging even if nothing was ever "official."
• Service Minutes -- a weekly check-in (full / partial / missed) against the therapy/service minutes your child is owed, so you can see -- not guess -- whether scheduled sessions are actually happening. An unlogged week never counts against or for the total; it's only ever as complete as what you've actually logged.
• Evidence Binder -- compiles documents, communications, behavior entries, Findings, and the Timeline into one printable packet for a meeting or an attorney. Nothing is stored permanently as a "binder" -- it's freshly assembled from your own data each time you generate it, and everything defaults to included unless you narrow it down.
• Letters -- draft formal letters to the district, built from facts already verified elsewhere in the app: requesting an evaluation or reevaluation, disagreeing with an IEP or PWN, requesting a meeting, requesting an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE, often at no cost to you), or following up after a meeting to put what was discussed and decided in writing -- the single most useful one if you only draft one letter ever, since a verbal agreement that's never written down is much harder to point back to later. You always review and edit the draft before sending anything; nothing goes out automatically.
• Citations -- look up the exact law or rule behind any deadline or right the app cites.
• Calendar -- your school's own calendar, uploaded as a PDF or photo. The app reads it and pulls out the school year and every non-instructional day (holidays, teacher in-service days, breaks). This matters because some deadlines are counted in school days, not calendar days -- without your district's real calendar, the app can only estimate by skipping weekends.

The Guide tab

General reference material, not specific to your child's own documents or dates -- the reading room. It covers:

• Your rights under IDEA and your state's law, including protection from retaliation for exercising them.
• Common mistakes other parents have made, so you don't have to learn them the hard way.
• What to do if you disagree with the school -- the full escalation ladder, from an informal conversation up through a formal due process hearing, with real citations at every step.
• A searchable glossary of IEP jargon -- and anywhere in the app you see a term underlined with a dotted line, you can tap or hover it for the same plain-language definition without leaving the page.
• Who's who on an IEP team, explained in plain language.
• Background on disability categories.
• A directory of advocacy organizations in your state, including your state's free Parent Training and Information Center and national professional organizations (like AOTA, ASHA, APTA) for OT/speech/PT-specific questions.

Your Roadmap

Most of this section applies at any age, starting the moment your child is referred for an evaluation: the four life-stage guides on its Overview page (Entering Special Education, Elementary to Middle School, Middle School to High School, High School to Adulthood) and Try It Yourself's practice tools aren't age-gated at all. The one piece that genuinely is age-14-16-specific -- the interests/strengths/goals profile IDEA calls "transition services" -- has its own "Transition Profile" entry. Here's how the parts differ:

Also linked from here: Paying for College -- typical costs by school type, FAFSA and financial-aid basics, loans vs. grants vs. scholarships, and what to do after an acceptance letter.

Letter of Intent

Not a legal document -- possibly the most important thing in this whole section. A place to write down what you know about your child that lives nowhere else on paper: daily routine, communication style, what soothes them, what triggers them, important relationships, current providers, medical needs, and cultural or religious practices that matter to your family. Written for whoever cares for your child later, whenever "later" is. It's saved as one living document you edit in place over time, not a one-time form -- worth a quick look once a year or so as things change.

Student View

Student View isn't a separate account for your child -- it's a restricted, PIN-locked mode inside your own account, so a curious kid can't just close the window to get back into your full account (your own login is fully removed from the browser while Student View is active, not just hidden).

Turning it on: set a PIN for your child on their own page, then tap "Enter Student View" and hand over the device. To get back to your own account, tap "Exit Student View" and enter the PIN (repeated wrong guesses trigger a short lockout).

What your child can do: see their own accommodations (in the same words you or the school used, or a kid-friendly rewording if you've saved one -- see below), add "My Voice" journal entries about what's working and what's hard, see career matches and any saved plan, see self-advocacy scripts, add their own transition goals in their own words, and see their resume entries. They can't view documents, the behavior log, billing, or edit/delete any record you've entered.

Kid-friendly accommodation wording

A short, simple, second-person rewrite of one accommodation, written directly to your child ("You get extra time on tests, so you don't have to rush") for them to read in Student View. Only works for accommodations -- never goals, evaluations, or modifications -- and never mentions or hints at a diagnosis, only what the accommodation is and how it helps. You request it, review the AI's draft yourself, edit if needed, and only your saved, approved version is ever shown to your child.

Families & accounts

• Multiple children -- add as many as you need; each gets their own full set of pages.
• Co-Parent Access -- invite a co-parent or another caregiver to see the same information, from your child's page.
• Printable pages -- a "know your rights" summary and other pages are built to print cleanly for a meeting or a binder.

Privacy & your data

Everything you enter -- documents, goals, services, meeting notes, your child's whole IEP history -- stays in your own account, never shared with your school district or anyone else unless you choose to send it yourself (downloading a letter, printing a summary, exporting your data).

Export Data, in Account Settings, downloads a single zip file with everything: a data file covering every structured record for every child, plus a copy of every uploaded document, organized by child and school year. Since everything you enter lives only in your own account, this export is your one real safety net if something happens to your device or you switch computers -- worth doing every so often, and the app will remind you if it's been a while.

Have a question this guide doesn't answer, or think something's not working right? Use the Contact page -- a real person reads those.