Requests and evaluations
Every written request you send the school with its date and the answer, and every evaluation with the date you received the report and your questions about it. Everything you type stays in this browser.
For a first pass, use whichever sheet fits where you are. If you are asking for a first evaluation, the requests sheet is essential: one dated row for the request (Referral and evaluation). If an evaluation report exists, the evaluations sheet is essential: its dates and your questions. A reader who skips both loses the dates that later steps are counted from.
Requests
One row per written request (Referral and evaluation, Before the meeting and When you disagree). Keep a copy of each request with this date on it.
Evaluations
One row per evaluation or report (Referral and evaluation). Write one question for each section you do not follow.
How to use this sheet
- One row per written request. Evaluation, records, the draft IEP, a meeting, prior written notice, an independent evaluation: each request gets its own row, with the date sent and the way it went.
- Keep the request itself. Save a copy of each request with its date on it; the row points to it.
- Write the response and its date. What came back (a consent form, a notice, a meeting date, nothing yet) and when.
- One row per evaluation or report. Write the date it was done, the date you received the report, and the date it was reviewed with the team; these are often three different dates.
- One question per section you do not follow. The questions column feeds your list for the meeting.
The example row is Ada Okafor's request for Tomi's evaluation in Pennsylvania, sent September 14 by email and on paper. The school's answer, the consent form and the safeguards notice, arrived September 18. The row separates the date of the request from the date of the answer, and Ada will add the date she signs consent separately, because the federal evaluation timeline starts at the school's receipt of consent, not at the request.
These sheets record dates and documents. They do not calculate an evaluation timeline or say whether one has been met: the federal rule is quoted in How the process works, your state's is on its notice, and your state's offices or parent center answer whether it applies. This manual does not interpret any child's scores or say whether an evaluation was adequate.