Who writes the IEP?
Updated: December 13, 2025. Reviewer: Dr. Rose Sebastian, Ed.D.
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The Ideal and Real of IEP Writing
Special education teachers will create draft IEPs before the IEP meeting. Related service providers will enter their information onto this draft at or before the meeting– but parents, students, and general education teachers will typically not see it until the meeting.
Then at the meeting, the team is supposed to review and edit the draft, adding things the parent, student, or general education teacher want and taking away things that they think don’t work.
Unfortunately, IEPs are long and complex. Most meetings are rubber stamps of a pre-created draft as opposed to a collaborative editing session.
That is directly against what the department of education recommends in 71 Fed. Reg. 46540. They don’t love draft IEPs written prior to meetings and really want parents to either have access to those drafts before the meeting or to really know that it is a draft that the parent can help shape.
Who Writes the IEP
Can schools write draft IEPs before the meeting?
Let’s be very clear that almost all schools will come to the IEP meeting with a draft of the IEP already written. IDEA does not say anything about drafts of the IEP.
As a result, the department of education clarified in 2004 that, while they really hate draft, schools can bring drafts to the IEP meeting IF they make it clear that it is just a draft and encourage editing and participation.
AKA the district is not supposed to have parents just rubber stamp an IEP.
Here is what the department of education said in their commentary on IDEA 2004 (71 Fed. Reg. 46540):
With respect to a draft IEP, we encourage public agency staff to come to an IEP Team meeting prepared to
discuss evaluation findings and preliminary recommendations. Likewise, parents have the right to bring questions, concerns, and preliminary recommendations to the IEP Team meeting as part of a full discussion of the child’s needs and the services to be
provided to meet those needs. We do not encourage public agencies to prepare a draft IEP prior to the IEP Team meeting, particularly if doing so would inhibit a full discussion of the child’s needs. However, if a public agency develops a draft IEP prior to the IEP Team meeting, the agency should make it clear to the parents at the outset of the meeting that the services proposed by the agency are preliminary recommendations for review and discussion with the parents.
The public agency also should provide the parents with a copy of its draft proposals, if the agency has developed them, prior to the IEP Team meeting so as to give the parents an opportunity to review the recommendations of the public agency prior to the IEP Team meeting, and be better able to engage in a full discussion of the proposals for the IEP.
It is not permissible for an agency to have the final IEP completed before an IEP Team meeting begins.
Who is responsible for writing the IEP?
In practice, the special education teacher. That is probably the biggest part of the special educator’s job. They do the informal assessments for annual IEPs, create the goals, and write everything down. Everything is supposed to be done with the input of the team, but special educators are the ones with access to the district’s online IEP writing software and so they enter everything into the system.
What happens when people want changes in the IEP?
The copy of the IEP brought to an IEP meeting is a draft. It is supposed to be marked up and edited by the team. Parents can have copies of the draft before the meeting to write up comments in advance. They can also take the draft home after the IEP to look at more and make more comments on before they sign any consent.
Nothing is written in stone until a parent signs consent. And then the parent can still say, whoops and ask for an IEP amendment to make more changes.
