The ARD decoder: what the school’s special-education words mean in Texas

My daughter has been attending public school for a few years now. She loves school, and on weekends when we drive by the building she says, “Hey! My school!” But I remember being so stressed out and confused when she was still at her private preschool. All the acronyms and terminology I was reading about in preparation for her kindergarten year was just… daunting. Overwhelming.

It started to click for me when the mom of one of her classmates, who is also an elementary school teacher, said: “The IEP is the document. The ARD is the meeting about it.” That explanation simplified things a bit for me. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m a crafty veteran yet, but I do know some of the lingo, and I created this guide for other parents.

It is the school-side companion to our therapy-terminology decoder, with the Texas numbers attached, because the numbers are the part nobody explains. It is a vocabulary guide, not legal advice: where a rule is quoted, the source is named so you can read it yourself. Current as of September 2026.

First: what an ARD is, and why Texas calls it that

ARD — Admission, Review, and Dismissal. Everywhere else in the country this is “the IEP team” and “the IEP meeting.” In Texas the committee that decides whether your child qualifies (admission), writes and reviews the plan (review), and ends services (dismissal) is the ARD committee, and people say “the ARD” for both the group and the meeting. Same thing, Texas name.

Who has to be in the room. You. At least one general-education teacher, and since 2025 it has to be one who will actually carry out part of the plan. At least one special-education teacher or provider. A district representative who can commit resources. Someone who can explain what the evaluation results mean. Your child, when it is appropriate. Extra members join for specific situations: a certified teacher of students with visual impairment or of deaf and hard-of-hearing students when those are suspected, a language-committee member for emergent bilingual students, and a member with dyslexia credentials when dyslexia is on the table. You can also bring anyone you want who knows your child, including a private therapist.

Mutual agreement, and the recess. ARD decisions are supposed to be made by agreement. If you disagree, the district must offer you one recess so everyone can regroup, and the meeting reconvenes within ten school days unless you both agree to a different date. If there is still no agreement after that, the district can implement its version of the plan and must give you written notice of what it decided and why, and you can attach your own statement of disagreement. The one exception is the very first placement: services cannot start without your written consent.

The clocks: what happens after you ask for an evaluation

These are the numbers most worth knowing, and the ones most often quoted wrong. Texas counts some in school days and some in calendar days, and the difference matters.

• Put the request in writing. A written request for a special-education evaluation, to the district’s special-education director or any administrator, starts the clock. A conversation in the hallway does not.
• 15 school days for the district to respond: either a proposal to evaluate, with a consent form and your rights notice, or a written refusal that explains why.
• 45 school days from your signed consent to the finished evaluation report. Summer break does not count. If your child misses three or more days during that window, those days are added. If you sign consent in roughly the last seven weeks of the school year, the report is due by June 30 and the meeting happens in the first three weeks of the next year.
• 30 calendar days from the written report to the ARD meeting that decides eligibility and writes the plan. Calendar days, not school days, with an adjustment if the thirtieth day falls in a school closure.
• Every 3 years your child is re-evaluated, unless you and the district agree it is not needed, and no more than once a year unless you both agree.

The commonly misquoted version. “Sixty days for the evaluation” is the federal default. Texas is 45 school days. “Thirty school days to the ARD” is also wrong: it is thirty calendar days.

FIE — Full and Individual Evaluation. The evaluation itself, done by the district across every area of suspected need. You may also see FIIE, which just adds “initial.” If the school says “we’ll do an FIE,” this is the 45-school-day clock.

Child Find. The district’s legal duty to find and evaluate every child with a disability inside its boundaries, including children too young for kindergarten, children in private school, and children who are homeschooled. It is the reason you can ask your home district for an evaluation before your child is enrolled anywhere.

RTI / MTSS — Response to Intervention, Multi-Tiered System of Supports. The general-education support steps a school tries first. In Texas a referral for an evaluation is supposed to grow out of this process, but a district may not make you wait through a set number of intervention weeks before evaluating, and must refer when a child keeps struggling.

REED — Review of Existing Evaluation Data. At re-evaluation time, the ARD committee, with you, looks at what is already known and decides what new testing, if any, is needed. A REED can conclude that no new testing is needed. You can still ask for testing.

IEE — Independent Educational Evaluation. If you disagree with the district’s evaluation, you can ask for an outside one at public expense. The district then either pays for it or asks a hearing officer to rule that its own evaluation was adequate, and it has to do one or the other without unnecessary delay. One IEE per district evaluation.

The plan itself: the words inside an IEP

IEP — Individualized Education Program. The written plan: what your child needs, what the school will provide, how often, where, and how progress will be measured. If Spanish is your family’s primary language, Texas requires a copy in Spanish, written or audio; for other languages the district makes a good-faith effort.

PLAAFP — Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance. The “present levels” section: where your child is now, in data, and how the disability affects school. Every goal is supposed to start from here, which is why it is worth reading closely.

Annual goals. The measurable targets for the year, academic and functional, with a plan for reporting progress to you.

Accommodations vs. modifications. An accommodation changes how your child gets to the same material: extra time, a different format, sensory breaks, a quieter room. A modification changes the material or the expectation itself. They are not the same word, and in Texas a modified curriculum has to be written into the plan, including for high-school endorsements.

SDI — specially designed instruction. The “special education” part: teaching that is adapted in content, method, or delivery for your child.

Related services. The supports a child needs in order to benefit from that instruction. Federal law names speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, and physical therapy on the list. The plan must say how often, for how long, and where. In Texas, speech can also be a child’s main or only special-education service, not just a related one.

LRE — least restrictive environment. The rule that a child is educated alongside classmates without disabilities to the greatest extent that is appropriate for that child. On Texas paperwork it shows up as a placement label: mainstream, resource, self-contained, speech therapy, homebound, and a few others.

FAPE — free appropriate public education. The district’s core obligation, and the phrase every other rule hangs from.

ESY — Extended School Year. IEP services that continue through the summer. The ARD committee decides child by child, and the Texas standard is whether a child would lose skills in a critical area over the break that could not be regained within eight weeks. Informal data counts, including what you have seen at home. A district cannot rule it out by disability category. If summer regression worries you, the spring ARD is when to raise it.

FBA and BIP — Functional Behavior Assessment, Behavior Intervention Plan. An FBA figures out what a behavior is doing for a child; a BIP is the written plan built from it. Families of children in ABA will recognize both words from the clinic side.

Transition planning. Goals for life after high school, with the services to get there. Texas requires them in the plan that is in effect when a student turns 14, two years earlier than the federal floor. Our guide for teens and older kids picks up from there.

The letters on the eligibility page

Texas uses its own labels for the federal disability categories, and the abbreviations are what you will see on the evaluation and the plan. As of the 2024 rule update:

• AU — autism. Texas plans for a child with autism must consider a set list of supports every year, often called the autism supplement.
• DHH — deaf or hard of hearing. Older paperwork says AI, auditory impairment. Same category, renamed.
• DB — deaf-blindness.
• ED — emotional disability. The rule treats this as the same thing as the federal “emotional disturbance.”
• ID — intellectual disability.
• MD — multiple disabilities.
• OI — orthopedic impairment. Needs a physician’s diagnosis.
• OHI — other health impairment. Where ADHD usually lands. Needs confirmation from a physician, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner.
• SLD — specific learning disability, which now expressly includes dyslexia and dysgraphia. Since a 2023 law, a Texas evaluation has to say “dyslexia” or “dysgraphia” when it finds them.
• SI — speech impairment. A speech-language pathologist is part of the evaluation.
• TBI — traumatic brain injury. Physician’s diagnosis.
• VI — visual impairment. Eligible from birth.
• DD — developmental delay. New in Texas as of the 2024–25 school year, for ages 3 through 9. This is where many children coming out of ECI now land.
• NCEC — noncategorical early childhood. Retired. Districts stopped assigning it in 2025–26; a child who already had it can keep it until the re-evaluation before age six. If new paperwork still says NCEC, ask.

Your rights, in the order you will meet them

Notice of Procedural Safeguards. The booklet of your rights under federal law, from TEA. You get it at referral, once a year, and at a few other points. The current edition is dated January 2025; if the school hands you an older one, the newer one is on TEA’s SPEDTex site (linked at the end).

Consent. Your informed written yes, required before the first evaluation and before services first start. You can withdraw it.

ARD meeting notice. Written notice of the meeting, with its purpose, time, place, and who will be there, at least five school days ahead unless you agree to less. If you ask for an ARD yourself, the district has five school days to schedule it or tell you in writing why not. TEA has proposed changing the notice period to ten calendar days; as of this writing the five-school-day rule is the one in effect.

PWN — Prior Written Notice. Any time the district proposes or refuses to change your child’s identification, evaluation, placement, or services, it owes you a written explanation: what it decided, why, what information it used, what other options it considered and rejected, and where to get help. In your native language, and at least five school days before it acts unless you agree to less. Same proposed change to ten calendar days, same status.

ARD facilitation. A neutral facilitator, provided by TEA at no cost, who runs the meeting so everyone gets heard. Voluntary, and worth knowing about before a meeting you expect to be hard.

Mediation. A voluntary, confidential, TEA-funded process for working out a disagreement with a neutral mediator, outside of a hearing.

State complaint. A written complaint to TEA that the district broke a rule, filed within one year of the problem. TEA has sixty calendar days to resolve it.

Due process. The formal hearing before a TEA-assigned hearing officer. In Texas you have two years from when you knew or should have known about the problem to file. You will still see “one year” quoted; that changed in 2022.

504 vs. IEP, and where dyslexia goes now

Section 504 plan. Accommodations under a federal civil-rights law, run by the district, with no specially designed instruction. It is enforced by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, not by TEA, and Texas sets no state timelines for it. A 504 plan is the lighter tool; an IEP is the fuller one.

Dyslexia. For years the default in Texas was “dyslexia means a 504 plan.” Since a 2023 law, dyslexia and dysgraphia are identified through the same full evaluation and ARD process as everything else, with a dyslexia-credentialed member on the committee. A 504 plan can still be the outcome if a child needs accommodations but not specialized instruction, but it is no longer the automatic answer.

Before kindergarten: from ECI to the school district

The age-3 transition. Early Childhood Intervention ends on a child’s third birthday. Federal rules require a transition conference at least ninety days before that birthday, and if the child qualifies, an IEP in effect by the birthday itself. You can ask that your ECI service coordinator be invited to the first ARD. Children with visual impairment, who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who are deaf-blind can be served by the district from birth. Our ECI age-3 guide walks through the timing month by month.

ECSE — Early Childhood Special Education. The district’s program for eligible children ages three to five. You may still hear its older name, PPCD. Same program, renamed in 2019.

School therapy and clinic therapy are two tracks

Speech, OT, and PT through an IEP are tied to what your child needs to benefit from school. A clinic’s plan of care can target anything in your child’s life. Many children do both at the same time, and school teams usually call the clinic side “outside therapy.” Nothing in an IEP prevents private therapy, and nothing in private therapy replaces the school’s obligations. If you are waiting on a clinic slot while the school process runs, our waitlist guide is about exactly that stretch, and the kindergarten guide covers fitting outside therapy around a school day.

Who to call in Texas

• SPEDTex, TEA’s special-education information line, in English and Spanish: 1-855-773-3839, inquire@spedtex.org, spedtex.org. TEA’s Parent’s Guide to the ARD Process and the Notice of Procedural Safeguards (both January 2025 editions) live there too.
• Partners Resource Network, the federally funded parent training center for Texas; its TEAM Project covers the Central Texas education region (Region 13): 1-800-866-4726, prntexas.org.
• Disability Rights Texas, the state’s protection and advocacy organization, for disputes the school will not resolve: intake 1-800-252-9108 or online at disabilityrightstx.org.

Finding pediatric therapy in Central Texas

Care Connect Kids is free for families. Always. Clinics pay for the platform, and speech, occupational, physical, and ABA therapy all live in one place, so the outside-therapy search does not have to be a separate project for each word on the plan.

Not sure whether we reach your family yet? Check your zip code. If you are in Central Texas, the Austin metro page shows where we cover today.