Why Are IEP So Hard To Read?

Updated: December 15, 2025. Reviewer: Dr. Rose Sebastian, Ed.D.

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Why Special Education Has So Much Jargon

Sitting with a student and helping them read their IEP can be an eye opening experience. Almost every other word requires an explanation and students are often left mystified as to what exactly their IEP actually says. The exception to this is often the accommodations page of the IEP. That page tends to be written in plain English– time and a half on tests, two extra weeks to turn in key assignments, can type all classroom assignments.

All fields have jargon and technical reports that are hard for outsiders to understand. The weird thing about special education though is that the IEPs are supposed to be intelligible to families and, ideally, students– but they are not. Some of that has to do with the challenges of having experts whose lives are awash in jargon try to explain something to a layperson who doesn’t know that jargon. The bigger answers though have to do with who IEPs are actually written for– because it really isn’t families or students.

Summary: Audits, The Hidden Part of Special Education

IDEA has an entire section devoted to compliance (20 U.S.C. § 1416 ). Every year, states have to report to the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) on how local education agencies in their state are doing at child find, providing FAPE, delivering services in the least restrictive environment, supporting students’ transitions, avoiding disputes with parents, and avoiding racial discrimination in assessment and services. OSERS then compiles a report each year that shares the data from each state.

States implement this part of the law in a few different ways. First, states closely monitor timelines to ensure that paperwork is getting done in the legally required timeframe. Second, they pull numbers and monitor how many parent disputes there are and the racial breakdown of who is being served, under what categories, and where they are being served.

But third, and most importantly for hard to read IEPs, they audit district’s IEPs. During audits, they pull a few IEPs from each district (exactly how many, how often, and whose IEPs are pulled will vary a lot) and check them to legal compliance. They are checking to make sure all of the language in the IEP sounds the way it is supposed to under state codes– which are how the state has chosen to interpret IDEA. And, states are infamously picky. One teacher’s IEP failed in the state audit because the state didn’t like how she had described the student’s previous English class. As in, its name. As a result, IEPs are incredibly jargon heavy with weird turns of phrase that are aimed at state auditors, not parents or students or teachers.

Understanding Some of the Jargon in Special Education

IEP

Individual education program and the paperwork that spells out the educational plan for a student including their goals and services.

General or regular education

General or regular education: Classes or teachers of classes of students who are more typically developing.

Environment

Where a student is getting services. How much of their day are they spending with students without disabilities? Where are their special education services being delivered?

Push in or pull out

Is a special educator pushing into the student’s classroom to deliver services or is the student getting pulled out into a separate room for services?

LEA

Local education agency. At an IEP meeting, it is the person who serves as the representative of the district and can say yes or no on things that might cost the district money or get the district into trouble with audits.

Inclusion or mainstreaming

Both terms refer to time students with disabilities spend with more typically developing peers– aka in general education environments. Mainstreaming is an older term mostly used to imply that the students with disabilities belong somewhere separate but should get some time in general education. Inclusion means that the student has a home in general education.