Education Across the States · State Guides
Special education in Washington, step by step — Washington’s rules, Washington’s dates
Our third state publication: four complete guides to special education in Washington — one for parents navigating an IEP, one for parents navigating a Section 504 plan, one for the educators who write and run the plans, and one for the administrators accountable for all of it. Every timeline, address, and date in them is Washington’s own, checked against the state’s published documents.
The full guides are free. Subscribe and we’ll email them to you — all four guides, in English and Spanish, with the fill-in letters. Below is what’s inside each one.
What it is: A step-by-step walk through special education in Washington public schools — referral, evaluation, eligibility, the IEP, and every route for resolving disagreements.
Who it's for: Parents and guardians of students ages 3 through the school year of their 22nd birthday, and the family advocates who help them.
What's inside: Twenty steps, including how to ask for an evaluation, what a lawful evaluation must include, what belongs in the IEP (all thirteen required elements), placement in the least restrictive environment, transition planning, discipline protections, and the community complaint and due process systems.
What's Washington-specific:
What it is: The complete Section 504 path for Washington families — who qualifies, how evaluations work, what a plan should contain, and how to challenge decisions.
Who it's for: Parents of students who need accommodations but not specially designed instruction — and parents told "not IDEA-eligible" who were never asked the 504 question.
What's inside: Twelve steps covering the federal rules (34 C.F.R. Part 104) as they operate in Washington, including the honest headline most guides avoid: there are no specific 504 evaluation timelines — and what to do with that fact.
What's Washington-specific:
What it is: Special education practice organized the way the work flows — Identify → Evaluate → Write → Implement → Monitor → Meet — with Washington's clocks and failure modes at each stage.
Who it's for: Teachers, school psychologists, counselors, related-services providers, and building administrators.
What's inside: Child find as an active duty; consent's asymmetric rules; the 35/5/40 evaluation-report-meeting stack; required IEP content including the High School and Beyond Plan alignment and the RCW 28A.155.210 notification element; discipline procedure from removal counting through expedited hearings; and a failure-mode checklist drawn from Washington's documented compliance problems.
What it is: The administrative year in one document: dated OSPI obligations, rolling clocks, the WISM monitoring system, the dispute map, staffing capacity, and corrective action.
Who it's for: District special education directors, superintendents, and compliance staff.
What's inside: The 2026–27 dated calendar from OSPI's own publications (WISM selections by mid-September 2026; noncompliance corrected by March 1, 2027; Disproportionality Workbook due May 3, 2027); the November federal child count mechanics; the Safety Net cycle and thresholds from Bulletin 056-25; annual determinations; the statewide online IEP system (RCW 28A.155.275); and a verify-don't-assume checklist — starting with the gap between the statute's age-22 rule and the rule text your binders still print.
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