School-Based OT, PT and SLP Evaluation Reports Under IDEA: The Federal Rules Your Report Has to Meet

The federal assessment procedures

34 CFR 300.304 sets the procedures every evaluation must follow. The ones that shape a therapy report:

• Use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental and academic information, including from the parent.
• Never use any single measure or assessment as the sole criterion for determining eligibility or the program.
• Assessments are administered by trained and knowledgeable personnel, in the child’s native language or mode of communication, and for the purposes they are valid and reliable for.
• The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, where appropriate, motor abilities and communicative status.
• The evaluation is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the child’s special education and related services needs, whether or not they are commonly linked to the disability category.

The 60-day clock

Under 34 CFR 300.301(c), the initial evaluation must be conducted within 60 days of receiving parental consent, or within the state’s own timeframe if the state has set one. Many states have. The clock starts at consent, not at referral and not at your first session with the child, so find out the consent date before you schedule anything.

Note the word “evaluation” here. IDEA uses evaluation for the whole process and assessment for the individual tools within it. Keep that distinction in your report and you will match the regulation and the district’s own language.

Review existing data first

Section 300.305 requires the team to review existing evaluation data, including evaluations and information provided by the parents, current classroom-based assessments and observations, and observations by teachers and related services providers. Your report should say what you reviewed. A therapy evaluation that ignores the classroom record reads as if it happened in a clinic, and the IEP team will notice.

Who decides, and from what

You do not determine eligibility. Under 300.306(a)(1), a group of qualified professionals and the parent of the child determines whether the child is a child with a disability. Your evaluation feeds that decision. The group must draw on information from a variety of sources, including aptitude and achievement tests, parent input and teacher recommendations, as well as information about the child’s physical condition, social or cultural background and adaptive behavior, and it must document that each source was considered.

Write your report knowing that. Present findings and their educational impact; leave the eligibility determination to the team. A report that announces “the student qualifies” has overstepped, and a report that never connects a finding to school participation has left the team nothing to use.

The one written report the regulation spells out

For specific learning disability, 34 CFR 300.311 prescribes the written report’s contents, and it is a useful model for any related-services evaluation even where the category is different. It requires the relevant behavior noted during the observation and its relationship to academic functioning, the educationally relevant medical findings, and a certification in writing from each group member as to whether the report reflects their conclusion. Observation, educational relevance and an explicit conclusion: those three things belong in every school evaluation report.

What goes in the narrative

The regulation fixes the procedure; the profession fills in the content. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association describes a school evaluation as covering case history including medical status, education and linguistic background, teacher input, standardized and non-standardized measures, and a report with interpretation of results alongside diagnoses and severity. The same shape works for OT and PT. A running order the team can use:

• Student details, referral source and date, date of parental consent, evaluation dates
• Reason for referral and the questions the evaluation is answering
• Existing data reviewed, including classroom observations and teacher input
• Parent input, in their own words where possible
• Assessments administered, each with its date, setting and score, and what each is valid for
• Observation in the educational setting, with the specific behavior seen and when
• Findings by area, for OT: fine motor, gross motor, sensory processing, self-care, cognition and perception; for PT: gross motor, mobility, posture, transfers; for SLP: attention and listening, understanding, spoken language and speech sounds, social interaction
• Educational impact: how each finding affects access to the curriculum, participation and, for older students, preparation for adulthood
• Summary of findings and the evaluator’s conclusion, signed with designation and license

The mistake that makes a report unusable

Findings with no educational impact. A clinic-style report that records standard scores and percentiles and then stops has answered a question nobody on the IEP team asked. Every finding needs a sentence about the classroom: what the child cannot currently do in school because of it, and what that looks like on an ordinary day. That sentence is what turns a clinical result into a related-services need.

The second mistake is scoring from one instrument. The regulation prohibits it, and a single standardized score with no observation and no classroom data will be challenged by any parent who has read the rules.

Where Carearoo fits

Carearoo is building a school-based evaluation report drafter for US occupational therapists, physical therapists and speech-language pathologists that follows the federal procedure: data reviewed, tools named with dates and scores, observation recorded, and an educational-impact line under every finding. It is not live yet. State eligibility forms stay with the district; the narrative is what Carearoo will draft. For now, free invoicing is what is live for US clinicians, and the early access list is on the same page. Therapists who also do workers’ compensation work may want the FCE guide.

Frequently asked questions

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