Open your child's IEP and find the services grid. Every service listed is supposed to answer three questions: how often, for how long, and where. "Speech therapy, 30 minutes, 2x per week, speech room" — that's a service. "Speech support as needed" is a hope.
Federal regulations require the IEP to state the special education and related services the child will receive (34 CFR § 300.320(a)(4)) — including the projected start date and the anticipated frequency, location, and duration of those services (§ 300.320(a)(7)). Language like "as needed," "consultative," or "when appropriate" leaves every one of those blank. If it can't be measured, the school can't be held to it — and services that aren't pinned down are the first to quietly evaporate when staffing gets tight.
Request an IEP meeting in writing and ask for each vague service to be rewritten with real numbers: minutes, frequency, location, and who delivers it. If the team says flexibility helps your child, flexibility can be written into a measurable service ("30 min 2x/week, scheduled within the school day") — it doesn't require deleting the numbers.
Then hold the line at the meeting: before you sign, read the services grid one row at a time and ask "how will I know if this was delivered?" If there's no answer, the row isn't done. Our free Fall IEP Audit checks this automatically — it grades service specificity in about a minute.
Rarely — and never as the only description of a core service. Even flexible supports can and should state anticipated frequency, duration, and location as 34 CFR § 300.320(a)(7) requires.
Document every missed session with dates and minutes. Your child may be owed compensatory education — make-up services for what the IEP promised but didn’t deliver.
Yes. You can request an IEP meeting in writing at any time, and the school must respond. State-specific response timelines are on our state pages.
Ask Know Your Rights any IEP question in plain language, free. And before the school year starts, run the free Fall IEP Audit — it grades last spring's IEP so you know exactly what to push on.
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