About IEP Guide

• Exploring publicly available education data
• Comparing schools, districts, and counties
• Understanding reported enrollment patterns
• Preparing better questions for school and district conversations
• Supporting research by families, educators, and advocates

• A replacement for an IEP team
• Legal or medical advice
• A school placement recommendation engine
• A guarantee of any program, service, or placement

• Public datasets may lag behind current school conditions
• Data may not reflect current services, staffing, or program availability
• A school's reported enrollment does not guarantee availability of a specific program or placement
• Data fields may be incomplete, delayed, or reported differently across sources
• Use data as a starting point, not the sole basis for decisions
• Always confirm details directly with schools, districts, and IEP teams

IEP Guide does not publish individual student records. The site is built around public, aggregated education data only — no student-level personal information is collected or displayed.

iepguide.org covers public schools and school districts across the United States. Our mission is to help every family — regardless of where they live — find and evaluate schools for children with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Coverage spans all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, drawing on federal and state public datasets.

Some states publish more granular special education data than others. Where campus-level information is unavailable, we fall back to district averages and clearly label those estimates.

Most school ratings ask one question: how well do students perform on tests? For families navigating an IEP, that single number does not answer what matters most — whether the school is actually equipped to serve a child with specific support needs.

Our ratings combine academic performance with three special-education-specific dimensions: who is on staff, how the program is structured, and whether the intensity of services matches the population the school serves.

SWD Support Rating. The 0–100 SWD Support Rating reflects four factors evaluated against what is typically expected for the school's program intensity level: specialist staff presence, staff credential level, program fit for the students served, and specialist-to-student caseload adequacy. Ratings vary based on data availability and relevance to the school's intensity level.

IEP-Ready Rating. The 0–100 IEP-Ready Rating combines SWD Support and Academic performance, weighted toward SWD Support to reflect what matters most for students with IEPs. A school can score well on academics but still have gaps in special education staffing — the IEP-Ready Rating surfaces both.

Academic Rating. The 0–100 Academic Rating is based on SAT/ACT college readiness scores and state-standardized test performance in Math and ELA. Calculated using state-reported assessment data.

• Specialist Staff Presence — Whether SLP, OT, school psychologist, nurse, and BCBA staff are physically present at the school in sufficient numbers for the students served.
• Staff Credential Level — Whether specialists hold credentials appropriate for the students they serve. A CCC-SLP with AAC specialization is better equipped for a non-verbal student than a general speech therapist, regardless of how many specialists are present.
• Program & Intensity Fit — Whether the school's classroom program matches the severity level of students served. Mismatch between program type and student need lowers the score.
• Caseload Adequacy — The ratio of students with disabilities to available specialist staffing, benchmarked against what each program intensity tier requires.

The four factors are blended into each school's score. Weights shift by program intensity tier — schools serving higher-need students put more weight on specialist presence and caseload, while lower-intensity programs put more weight on academic performance. Typical weighting ranges:

Weights always total 100%. Exact percentages depend on each school's assigned intensity tier (T1–T4).

Staff credential quality (board certification, licensure, and assistant-level roles) is incorporated within Specialist Presence as a quality multiplier rather than scored as a separate factor.

Two schools can both report a speech therapist on staff and still offer very different services. We look at the credential level of the staff each school reports — for example, a board-certified SLP with AAC specialization versus a clinical fellow or assistant — and use that to label staff quality as Strong, Good, Limited, or Poor.

Credential expectations scale with program intensity. A higher-credentialed specialist matters more at a Mod-Severe or Severe program than at a Mild resource setting.

We classify each school's special education program into one of four intensity tiers. The tier determines what staffing and program structure we expect to see.

• T1 — Mild: Predominantly mild learning and speech needs. Resource room / RSP programs. Shared specialists acceptable.
• T2 — Moderate: Mix of mild and moderate needs. SDC Mild/Moderate programs. Most specialists on-site.
• T3 — Moderate-Severe: Larger share of students needing related services and specialized instruction. SDC Moderate/Severe. All primary specialists must be on-site full-time.
• T4 — Severe: Meaningful share of students with complex medical, behavioral, or communication needs. Specialized center programs. Full dedicated staffing required.

School and district pages may surface special-education-related job openings sourced from public job boards such as EdJoin and Indeed. A “Job Opening” label links directly to live postings; a “No Vacancy” label means we found no current public listing for that school or district at the time of the last refresh.

Vacancies are a leading indicator of staffing pressure, not a verdict. A posting may be filled tomorrow; an empty board may still hide unfilled long-term substitute assignments. Use this alongside our staffing data, not as a standalone judgment.

• U.S. Department of Education — IDEA §618 personnel and child-count data
• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data
• State departments of education public reporting portals
• State assessment results in math and English language arts
• Public job-board listings (EdJoin, Indeed, district career pages) for vacancy signals
• OpenStreetMap / Nominatim for school location and distance lookups

Our scores are derived from publicly reported data and may lag behind current school conditions. A rating does not predict whether a specific child will thrive at a specific school, does not guarantee program availability, and is not a placement recommendation. Staffing, programs, and services change throughout the year and are negotiated through each child's IEP team.

Always confirm staffing, program structure, and service delivery directly with the school and district before making any placement decision.

iepguide.org does not collect or store any information about your child or your child's disability. Addresses entered for distance-to-school lookups stay in your browser session only — they are never saved to our database, shared with third parties, or included in analytics events.

We do not publish student-level records. All school and district figures shown on the site are public, aggregated data.