You’ve been to the ARD meetings. You’ve signed the paperwork. Your child has an IEP with goals, accommodations, and services in place. But weeks or months later, something feels off. The progress you expected isn’t happening—and you’re not sure what to do about it.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many parents find themselves in this situation, wondering whether to speak up, wait it out, or request a meeting. The good news? You have options—and the right questions can make all the difference.

How Do You Know If Progress Is a Problem?

First, it helps to understand what progress should look like. Every IEP includes progress reports that arrive with your child’s report card. These documents show how your child is performing on each goal—whether they’re making progress, maintaining skills, or falling behind.

The challenge? These reports can be easy to set aside without fully understanding what they contain. But buried in that document is critical information: progress codes, percentages showing where your child is on each goal, and indicators of whether they’re moving forward or falling behind.

Juan Hernandez, Director of Special Education Support Services at Brighton Center, encourages parents to actively engage with these reports. Every time you receive an IEP progress report, email the teacher to thank them and request work samples that demonstrate your child’s current skill level. Do this every grading period.

This creates two things: a paper trail of your engagement, and tangible evidence you can compare over time. When you have work samples from September, December, and March sitting side by side, patterns become visible that might otherwise go unnoticed.

You can also test progress at home. Ask the school to explain IEP strategies in plain language, then try them in real-world settings. If your child is learning to wait their turn at school, can they do it at the grocery store? This helps you see whether skills are generalizing—and gives you valuable information to share with the team if they’re not.

The Break Factor: Regression and What It Tells You

For many children with disabilities, school breaks aren’t just a pause—they can trigger noticeable regression in skills and overall progress. This is especially true after longer breaks, such as winter and spring holidays.

Pay attention to what happens when your child returns to school after a break. Are they picking up where they left off, or does it feel like starting over? A week or two of readjustment is normal. But if your child is still struggling to recoup skills several weeks later, that’s a red flag worth investigating.

Watch your child’s body language too. How do they feel when you drop them off or pick them up from school? For elementary-age students, there shouldn’t be significant resistance about going to school. If there is, something may be off—and it’s worth exploring whether the current plan is meeting their needs.

This regression pattern matters beyond daily well-being—it directly connects to Extended School Year (ESY) eligibility. If you’re seeing consistent skill loss after breaks, start documenting now. By the time spring arrives, you’ll have the data needed to make a case for summer services.

When Goals Miss the Mark

Sometimes the issue isn’t effort or implementation—it’s that the goals themselves weren’t quite right to begin with.
This is especially common for younger children or those just starting their special education journey. With limited data to draw from, the ARD committee often makes educated guesses about what a child can achieve. Sometimes those guesses overshoot.

Consider this example: a goal states that the child will count by twos to 50. But if that child can’t yet count to 20 with one-to-one correspondence, the goal is too ambitious. Working on advanced skills before foundational ones are solid sets everyone up for frustration.

The solution is to break skills into smaller, sequential steps. Start with the simplest task. If the child masters it quickly, great—move to the next thing. Undershooting a goal isn’t a problem; if a child learns something early, the team simply moves forward. But overshooting from the beginning is where progress stalls.

Progress over perfection. Slow and steady wins the race.

What Can Actually Change Mid-Year?

Here’s something many parents don’t realize: almost anything in an IEP can be adjusted if the team agrees it’s needed.
Goals can be revised. Service minutes can increase. New accommodations can be added. Strategies can be swapped out for approaches that better fit your child’s learning style. The IEP is meant to be a living document—not something carved in stone at the annual meeting and left untouched for twelve months.

Changes don’t always require a formal ARD meeting either. Adding an accommodation, for instance, can sometimes be done through an IEP amendment—via email communication, team agreement, and an electronic signature. The whole committee doesn’t necessarily need to gather in a room.

And, if there are strategies you’d like to try or the school staff would recommend, they don’t necessarily have to be in the IEP right away. Trial them first. If they work well, they can be added through an IEP amendment.

The Communication Strategy That Gets Results

When you’re concerned about your child’s progress, your first instinct might be to request an ARD meeting. And while that’s absolutely your right, it’s not always the fastest or most effective starting point. Logistically, ARD meetings take time to schedule and require the full committee to be present.

A more strategic approach starts smaller and builds momentum:
1. Start with emails. Request work samples and progress updates. Ask specific questions: “How is my child doing since the break? Can you share examples of their current work?”
2. Request a parent-teacher conference or staffing. This one-on-one time with the teacher (or relevant specialists) can happen much faster than a full ARD meeting and gives you space to discuss concerns in depth.
3. Loop in the full committee via email. Even if you’re meeting with one teacher, copy the entire ARD committee on your communications. This creates accountability and ensures everyone is aware of your concerns.
4. Request an ARD if changes need formal documentation. When accommodations need to be added, goals need revision, or services need adjustment, that’s when a full meeting makes sense.

Often, when parents are proactive and communicate concerns, the teacher will suggest taking the issue to the full team. Your documentation and engagement make it clear that action is needed—you don’t always have to be the one to formally request the ARD.

Trusting Your Instincts

One of the biggest mistakes parents make? Not asking questions at all.

Some parents feel guilty or worry about being a burden. But communicating with teachers about your child’s progress isn’t bothering them—it’s partnering with them. Other parents simply don’t know what questions to ask, so they stay quiet, assuming the school will flag concerns if something is wrong.

But educators are managing classrooms full of students, each with their own needs. Your child may not be on anyone’s radar unless you put them there.

Juan encourages parents to think long-term: “Don’t think about your child at five or six years old. Think about them at 30. We’re building a foundation now—and if it takes too long to build that foundation, we’re limited in what we can build on top of it.”

Early intervention matters. The longer a problem goes without being addressed, the harder it becomes to catch up. A concern that could have been resolved in second grade becomes a significant barrier by fourth grade—affecting not just that content area, but everything that builds upon it.

When to Bring in Support

If you’re unsure whether your concerns are valid, or you don’t know how to start the conversation with your child’s school, that’s exactly when outside support can help.

Brighton Center’s Special Education Support Services (SESS) consultants can review your child’s IEP and progress reports, help you identify what questions to ask, and guide you through effective communication strategies. Sometimes, simply having someone confirm that your instincts are right—that yes, this is worth pursuing—gives parents the confidence to advocate.

And if everything looks okay? The team will tell you that, too. But if there’s an issue, the sooner it’s addressed, the better the outcome for your child.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now

1. Pull out your child’s most recent IEP progress report. Look at the percentages and progress codes. Compare them to the previous report if you have one.
2. Email your child’s teacher requesting work samples. Ask for examples that demonstrate current skill levels in areas covered by IEP goals.
3. Document what you’re seeing at home. Note any regression after breaks, resistance to schoolwork, or changes in behavior or mood related to school.
4. Try IEP strategies at home. If your child is working on specific skills at school, practice them in real-world settings to see if they can generalize what they’ve learned.
5. Reach out to Brighton Center if you have questions. A free consultation can help you determine whether your concerns warrant further action.

Looking Ahead: Spring Break and ESY Planning

If you’re reading this in the winter months, you’re in a critical window. The data you collect now—after winter break and heading into spring—directly informs ESY eligibility conversations that typically happen in April and May.

If you’re seeing regression, communicate that concern to the team now. Let them know you’re thinking about ESY as a possible option, and that you’d like to monitor how your child does between now and spring break. Putting this on the team’s radar early ensures they know to watch for specific patterns—and gives you time to build the data needed for a productive conversation.

When ESY services are provided, they focus on maintaining critical skills—often just one or two behavioral or functional goals, not the entire IEP. Understanding this helps set realistic expectations while ensuring your child gets the summer support they need.

You Know Your Child Best

An IEP is a starting point, not a guarantee. Progress depends on the right goals, the right strategies, and ongoing communication between home and school. When something isn’t working, you have both the right and the responsibility to speak up.

Ask questions. Request data. Trust what you’re seeing at home. And remember that addressing concerns early—before small gaps become big ones—is one of the most important things you can do for your child’s educational journey.
Concerned about your child’s IEP progress? Brighton Center’s SESS team can help you review progress reports, prepare questions for school meetings, and develop a plan for effective advocacy. Schedule a free consultation to discuss your situation.