EvaluationIQ
The special-education pathway, mapped stage by stage.
EvaluationIQ is the special-education side of the SmartData family, built deliberately separate from SmartData's general-education scope. It runs on Texas's own rules: TEA's special-education framework, House Bill 2's intensity-of-services funding model, and the PEIMS reporting calendar that turns a committee's decisions into a state file.
Four Pathways
A student's year, and every road it can take.
One journey runs every year. One can start at any point in it. One runs alongside all of them, every time an IEP changes. Each pathway below is the real stage list, not a summary of one.
4 stages, one hand-off
The Evaluation Pathway
Where every case begins: referral, testing, and the eligibility decision that hands off into the IEP Pathway below.
Referral
A parent, a teacher or a Child Find screening raises a concern, and the district decides in writing whether to evaluate.
Consent
Parent notice and consent to evaluate are documented before any testing begins.
Testing
Assessments run across every area of suspected disability, building the evidence base the eligibility decision has to stand on.
Eligibility Decision
The committee reviews the evaluation report and decides eligibility, the hand-off point where the IEP Pathway below picks up.
8 stages, one loop
The IEP Pathway
The working plan that falls out of the evaluation, then a cycle the student travels every year they're served: hand-off feeds present levels, present levels feed goals, goals feed services, services feed the next annual review.
Hand-off
Eligibility is decided and the evaluation report is complete; the ARD committee convenes within 30 calendar days so the seam between evaluation and IEP never becomes a gap.
Present Levels
Evaluation findings and current data become the PLAAFP: baselines, sources and needs stated in terms a stranger could verify.
Goals
Every need named in the present levels gets a measurable annual goal: condition, behavior, criterion and measurement all pinned down, not left as one prose blob.
Services & Placement
Services, minutes, accommodations, the state-assessment decision, extended school year and the least restrictive environment are all decided and dated.
The ARD Meeting
The team meets, agrees the IEP or completes the disagreement path, secures consent for initial services, and Prior Written Notice goes out.
Implement
Services begin, every responsible adult is told their specific piece of the plan, and delivered minutes are tracked against what was promised.
Progress & Amend
Progress is reported on the IEP's own schedule, and changes happen by a documented amendment or by reconvening the team.
Annual Review
A new IEP takes effect before the old one lapses, because there is never a day without an IEP in effect for an eligible child.
7 path points, one event
The MDR Path
Discipline can strike at any point in a student's year, so this is a side-entry path, not a stage in the annual cycle, built around one question the pathway is engineered never to answer itself.
Incident
A discipline record arrives, and three screeners run before anything else moves: special circumstances, who is protected, and which student flags add duties.
Count the Days
Removals are counted in school days only. The change-of-placement call, the line at 10 days or a pattern that adds up to it, is a human judgment, logged and reviewable.
Notify the Parent
The same day a change of placement is decided, the parent receives notice and the Procedural Safeguards, and the meeting is scheduled.
Build the File
A timeline, a basis-of-knowledge check, and cited evidence for both manifestation questions come together in a planning document, with its decision block left blank.
Hold the MDR ARD
The committee, not the file and not any software, reviews everything and answers the two manifestation questions live, in the room.
Decide & Act
The answer routes the case: return to placement with an FBA and BIP duty, an immediate-remedy duty if the IEP wasn't implemented, or discipline as usual with services continuing from day 11.
Follow Through
Every task the route created runs on its own clock until closed, and the case exports whole: one record a district can hand to counsel.
8 stations, every student
Intensity of Services
Texas's HB 2 funding model reads how intensively a student is served, straight from what the IEP already documents, never the other way around.
The Queue
Every student receiving special education services sits in a known state: not started, draft, calculated, attested. A student with no direct service is tracked, never dropped.
The IEP Is the Anchor
The funding review reads what the IEP documents and nothing else. The default score is zero, and an uncertain call goes to the lower rating.
Check the Five Overrides
Before any rubric is scored, five defined conditions, from a speech-only caseload to a residential placement, can assign the tier directly.
Score the Rubric
Five domains, four factors each, scored zero to three from IEP evidence alone. A domain's score is its highest factor, never an average.
Service Groups & Minutes
Related-services minutes, one-to-one provider support, and average minutes in a special education setting are determined alongside the tier, for every student.
Attest
A named human signs the calculated record. From that moment it is a snapshot, changed only by a dated amendment with a stated reason.
Report Through PEIMS
Tier, service group and minutes report through PEIMS on the state's own calendar: roughly half of students by October 8, all of them by December 3.
Maintain All Year
Every ARD meeting that touches the IEP can be a funding event: the record is re-checked, and documentation gaps route back to the committee, never into a score.
Where It Stops on Purpose
Every pathway prepares the file. None of them make the call.
A referral needs a history: dates, evidence, citations, who said what and when. That history is what these pathways build. The decisions that history feeds stay exactly where the law puts them.
The committee decides
A determination made before the meeting is predetermination, one of the fastest ways to lose a hearing. Every pathway leaves its decision block blank until the room is actually in session.
The IEP drives funding, not the reverse
The intensity-of-services review reads what the IEP already documents. Funding classifications never determine placement, location, or services.
History, not a verdict
Timelines, citations, and evidence trails ship. Eligibility, goals, placement and manifestation outcomes stay with the district's own evaluation and ARD committees.
Who Reads It
Built for the people who own the pathway.
Special-education directors
One map of every pathway a student can travel, the clocks each one runs on, and where the district's own committees make the calls.
Evaluation coordinators & diagnosticians
The evidence trail behind a PLAAFP statement, a manifestation answer, or a rubric score, cited back to the IEP, not asserted.
Campus teams
Case managers and campus administrators get exactly their slice: their student, their accommodations, their responsibilities, with nothing to hunt for.
Questions districts ask first.
See your district's pathways mapped this way.
Walk through the Evaluation, IEP, MDR and Intensity of Services pathways with your own team in the room.
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