IEP advocacy matters and it is how educational consultants support and empower parents so they have more productive IEP meetings. IEP meetings are a required meeting where a student’s educational team, both school and family, come together to update the student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). Schools are required to hold IEP meetings at least once per year. Families are permitted to ask for the meetings to be held more often, though most families to not know that.
The IEP is the plan that outlines the educational services, supports, and goals the student needs to progress in school. The IEP forms prepared for students and provided to families vary state to state. In Pennsylvania, where our educational consulting firm, Janeane Davis and Associates: Educational Consultants is located, the IEP form is a minimum of 18 pages long. Most of those pages are small print. It is often intimidating for parents to read, understand, and work with that document on their own.
Parents can engage the services of educational consultants to help them at IEP meetings. When they do, it is important for all parties to understand that equitable advocacy is not about confrontation. It is about providing clarity, working in partnership, and ensuring that a student’s educational needs are fully understood and that plans are in place to achieve those goals.
I come to my work as an educational consultant, as a person who represents parents at IEP meetings due to my roles as a parent, community member, educational consultant, narrative scholar and equity architect. My firm provides support to families that honors their strengths, culture, and lived experience. This article will discuss what families face before the IEP meeting, my role as an IEP advocate, how our firm supports parents, and why this work matters.
Understanding the Parent Experience: What Families Face Before IEP Meetings
Most parents experience similar emotions when facing IEP meetings: anxiety, confusion, frustration, and hope. For many parents, emotional turmoil starts when they receive the notice to come to an IEP meeting and their child’s school. The letter from the school accompanying the notice to appear for the meeting is often laden with jargon. There is an obvious power imbalance when parents are told to come to the meeting at the school where there are not on equal footing with the other meeting attendees.
Often the timelines are rushed because the meeting must be held at least once per year. Schools are often busy and as a result the dates given to parents to attend the meetings are often close to the statutory due date and thus are non-negotiable. If it is close to the time when the meeting is statutorily required, and a parent is unable to attend the meeting on the date given, the meeting will be held in the parent’s absence. Parents often report a lack if access to information pertinent to the IEP.
Traditionally marginalized students and their parents often experience additional layers of bias or dismissal. For example, if they remark to school personnel that a proposed meeting time is inconvenient, they are often viewed as uninterested in their children’s education, rather than as having difficulty arranging time off from work. Their concerns about the meeting are often dismissed.
These parents often report being treated as if they had nothing to offer the educational team due to their lack of intelligence or lack of concern about their children. Some parents report feeling as if they have to prove they love and care about their children (Davis, 2025). Any advocate who attends an IEP meeting with a parent should amplify or not replace parental voices.
My Role as an IEP Advocate: What Support Really Looks Like at IEP Meetings
Our number one job as educational consultants is to ensure that families and students feel supported. These supports come in several forms. These forms include preparation, coaching, translation, and documentation strategy.
Preparation for IEP Meetings
Proper representation cannot happen without proper preparation. The first thing we do when we begin working with a family is listen. We firmly believe parents are the experts when it comes to dealing with their children. We believe that parents’ desires for their children and children’s desires for themselves are of paramount importance. Preparation includes the review of documents for the purpose identifying concerns, clarifying goals, and beginning to identify future steps. The documents we examine include previous IEPs, letters from teachers, report cards, and letters to and from administrators.
Coaching
Coaching is an important part of an educational consultant’s job. This is where we help parents articulate their needs, figure out what questions they have, and what community cultural wealth they bring to bear for their children’s benefit (Yosso, 2005). At every step along the way we engage in translation services. This means that we translate documents and conversations from education speak into plain language that is easier for parents to understand. In our experience, parents do not ignore IEP and other documents from the school because of lack of care for their children. They ignore them because they find the documents hard to decipher.
Equity Focus at IEP Meetings
When working with parents, we use an equity focus. We look for inequities, gaps, or patterns that need to be addressed. Traditionally marginalized parents often state the experience inequities in the form of teachers, administrators, and school districts not providing the information parents need in a timely manner (Davis). It also takes the form of information not being given to parents about potential advancement opportunities their children are qualified to receive. The equity lens also helps identify gaps that need to be addressed as part of the IEP process.
Emotional Support
Educational consulting also involves providing emotional support programs. The IEP process is often stressful and parents, particularly traditionally marginalized parents, often feel out of place and overwhelmed. Educational consultants providing emotional support helps parents feel grounded, confident, and heard.
Documentation Strategy
A final part of the coaching done by educational consultants includes creating a documentation strategy. This means ensuring that everything is captured and organized. Parents are better able to support their children and get the services and results they need when they feel they can easily access the information they need.During the Meeting: How We Support Parents in Real Time
When parents attend IEP meetings for their children, they need support in real time. We provide this support by doing several things. We set the tone, ensure parents’ voices are centered, navigate data and decisions, advocate for equity and access, and by documenting agreements and next steps,
Setting the Tone
Educational consultants set the tone in order to help parents enter the room with confidence. This is done starting with the intake process and during the preparation period. When working with parents we model collaboration and strengths-based communication.
Ensuring Parent Voice Is Centered
During the meeting, it is common for the teachers, special education staff, and administrators to dominate the conversation. It is the role of the educational consultant to redirect so that parental voices are centered. Parents should be encouraged to ask clarifying questions as often as necessary. Student strengths and concerns must be stated clearly.
Navigating Data and Decisions
It is important for parents to understand the evaluation results or progress data in the IEP. Educational consultants must be sure that the team makes decisions based on evidence from both home and school and not on assumptions. It is important to ask for examples, timelines, and implementation details.
Advocating for Equity and Access at IEP Meetings
During the IEP meeting, it is important to address bias, deficit language, or inequitable practices. At the meeting all partis must ensure that culturally responsive supports are considered. This includes requesting appropriate accommodations, services, and assessments.
Documenting Agreements and Next Steps
During the IEP meeting, the educational consultant must work to capture commitments, timelines, and responsibilities. It is crucial that care is taken at the meeting to ensure that there is nothing vague or open-ended in the IEP documents.
After IEP Meetings: Follow‑Up, Accountability, and Ongoing Support
An educational consultant’s work to support parents does not end when the IEP meeting ends. There is end of meeting follow up to be done, accountability measures to put into place, and ongoing support for parents. There are issues to button up. There are future plans to be made and for which to prepare. One of the first things that needs to be done is after visit follow up correspondence. An email should be sent to all parties who attended the meeting to confirm agreements made in the meeting verbally make it into the IEP documents.
Once the finalized IEP documents are completed and sent to parents, it needs to be reviewed with parents to be sure everything is understood, that the document is accurate, and in alignment. Next, the consultant should help the parent work on ways to track implementation and progress to accomplishing the IEP goals. It is important to coach parents on how to monitor services and communicate concerns. One of the final steps is to plan next steps for future meetings or transitions.
Real‑World Examples: What Advocacy Looks Like at IEP Meetings
In the real-world advocacy in action looks like parents receiving the results they need to adequately support their children on their academic journeys. In some cases, it looks like parents who felt overwhelmed when they received the notice to come to an IEP meeting leaving the meeting with a sense of clarity and ease. In other cases, it looks like parents having their equity concerns raised at the IEP meeting, addressed, and made part of the IEP documentation. In other cases, it looks like parental voices being heard and as a result the direction of the IEP meeting is changed, parental concerns are respected, and better educational outcomes are possible for students.
Why This Work Matters: The Bigger Picture of Equity in Special Education and IEP Meetings
The work of educational consultants in helping parents at IEP meetings matters. It matters for parents, students, and educators. Each time a parent works with an educational consultant and achieves equitable results for a student, it makes it more likely that other students will be able to achieve equitable results. In other words over the course of time, by working together, parents and educational consultants working together can help bring about systemic change.
This is due in part, to the fact that empowered parents influence school cultures. IEP processes which are culturally responsive and strengths- based help parents, students, and schools achieve better results. All of these things highlight one of the prime benefits of working with consultants like Janeane Davis and Associates: Educational Consultants – building equitable pathways for every student.
Conclusion
This article can serve as a call to action to educational consultants and parents. Parents who want better educational outcomes for their children should be bold about seeking support, asking questions, and should trust their own expertise. Teachers, administrators, and schools should embrace partnership and equity with parents. By working together parents, educational consultants, teachers, and administrators can make education better for all students. We look forward to working with parents to help them achieve better educational outcomes for their children and by doing so making it easier for other parents to do the same.
References
Davis, J. (2025). We love our kids too: Black parents supporting the academic success of their children in affluent, predominantly White school districts (Doctoral dissertation, West Chester University). West Chester University Open Commons. https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/all_doctoral/328/
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006
Further Reading
The Best Educators Strive to Create Equity-Centered Classrooms
Unlock Your Doctoral Success: Coaching & Resources That Work
Unleash the Fire Within: Maya Angelou’s Lifegiving Wisdom for Educators
About the Author
Dr. Janeane Davis is Founder and Principal Consultant at Janeane Davis and Associates: Educational Consultants. She designs equity-centered strategies that speak to both heart and structure—supporting educators who refuse to leave justice at the classroom door. Her writing invites reflection, courage, and the kind of clarity that shifts culture.
Desk light on. Equity in focus. Always listening.
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