<aside> 💡 This document aims at providing an overview of the research behind IEP&Me. This is a good way to understand the pain that we want to address, and the positioning that we have to fix it.

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👀 TL;DR

• Students in schools who learn differently, have disabilities, or are English language learners have the legal right to receive extra support through individualized education plans (often referred to as IEPs)
• The IEP process in schools is widely known to be archaic, silo-ed, and frustrating.
  • CA had an “IEP Workgroup” dedicated to fixing the process in 2021 [Report]
• When schools don’t do these processes well:
  • They’re liable for litigation from families
  • Students do not receive an appropriate education and thus are unable to perform to their fullest capability
  • Teachers are liable to leave
• Our users have been waiting on something like IEP&Me for years.
• Society and the education space are changing. IEP&Me is launching at the right time to highlight and support disability acceptance and personalized learning.
• IEP&Me has founder-market fit; we’re building the solutions we wanted alongside our long-term peers that are still in the classroom.
• It’s a multi-billion dollar industry in the US alone, and also a global opportunity in the coming years.

🏦 Opportunity Description

<aside> 💡 1 in 5 students in the United States has a learning disability requiring special education support from their school, but this process is confusing, overwhelming, and fractured.

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Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) are the 15-30 page legal documents that outline how schools will support each of these students and must be agreed upon by the guardians and school staff, including all the specialized professionals that work with the student.

The current archaic process means that, for anyone other than the special education teacher, these documents are only accessible via paper or PDF attachments in emails.

While the federal government spends more than $100 billion annually on special education, school districts consistently spend more than $1 million each year on due process and settlements because for the more than 21 million parents of kids with disabilities, the current status quo does not work.

To create the change needed, we bring all stakeholders together on an intuitive, secure platform - finally leveraging available technology to support our most marginalized students.

An idea years in the making, we are a company run by educators with deep special education and school leadership expertise, that is made to foster teamwork and stimulate student self-advocacy.

🐶 IEP&Me:

• is an innovative platform that streamlines and simplifies IEPs, 504s, and all individual learning plans for educators, students, and families by providing them an easy to read learning plan and essential tools and guidance to create and collaborate on those plans effectively.