The spring IEP review has a way of feeling like paperwork. The teacher is already thinking about clearing out the classroom. The case manager has four more meetings before Friday. Everyone in the room wants to say the year went fine and move on to summer. That instinct is understandable, and it is also the reason so many families walk out of this specific meeting having missed the one window where they had the whole team in a room together for ten weeks.

Once summer starts, the general education teacher who saw your child every day is gone until fall. The related service providers scatter to different assignments. The person who could tell you, in detail, how your child was doing in March is no longer easy to reach. The spring review is the last chance to get real answers while the people who know them are still in the building.

Ask for Data, Not a Summary

"Making good progress" is not an answer. Ask the case manager to pull the actual progress-monitoring data for every goal on the current IEP, not a paraphrase of it. For an academic goal, that means the number of correct responses out of the number attempted, tracked over time. For a behavior goal, that means frequency counts or duration data, not "fewer incidents than last semester."

The distinction matters because vague language hides two very different situations. A goal that says "70% progress" could mean your child mastered the skill in October and has been maintaining it since, or it could mean progress stalled in December and nobody adjusted the plan. Only the underlying data tells you which one happened, and that data is much easier to get before the person who collected it leaves for the summer.

Raise Extended School Year Now, Not in August

If your child has shown a pattern of losing skills over school breaks, extended school year (ESY) services need to be discussed at this meeting, not after summer has already started. Districts are required to consider ESY based on documented regression and recoupment time, and that determination depends on the same progress data you are asking for above. A detailed guide to ESY eligibility walks through the regression-recoupment standard districts use and what to bring to make the case. Waiting until July to bring it up usually means summer services, if approved at all, start too late to matter.

Get the Fall Placement in Writing

Ask directly: what does the first week of September look like? Same classroom, same aide, same related service schedule? If your child is moving between elementary and middle school, or between school buildings within the district, this is the meeting where that handoff should be discussed in specific terms, not general reassurances that "the new team will follow the IEP."

Request that any changes to placement, staffing, or service minutes discussed at this meeting be documented in writing before the team disperses. A verbal agreement in May about "probably keeping the same one-on-one support" is not enforceable in September if the person who said it has moved to a different school.

Document What Changed Since September

Pull out the IEP that was written the previous fall and compare it, goal by goal, against where your child stands now. Note which goals were met, which were partially met, and which saw no measurable movement at all. This comparison belongs in your own notes, not just the district's file, because it becomes the starting point for the next annual review and for any conversation about whether the current approach is working.

If a goal saw no progress for two consecutive reporting periods, that is worth naming directly in the meeting. Ask what the team plans to do differently, rather than simply carrying the same unmet goal forward into next year's IEP unchanged.

Confirm Who to Contact Over the Summer

Before the meeting ends, get a name and a way to reach someone if a question comes up in July, whether that is about a due process timeline, a referral that's still pending, or paperwork that needs to move before the next school year starts. Special education offices don't fully close for summer, but the person who normally answers your emails might. Knowing who covers that role during the break, and having gathered the full progress data and documentation from your child's meeting in hand, means a question in the middle of summer doesn't have to wait until the first week of the next school year to get answered.