From 3 rings to robots: The evolution of IEP binders is now 

Shannon Sankstone

I am always amazed at what can be accomplished in a short time by a dedicated team of people with a common problem and a solution-oriented mindset. Binders full of documents? Confusion around jargon? Frustrated with inaction? Check, check and check: The Arloa team has experienced it all, firsthand, and set out on a mission to fix it. 

Readers, meet Arloa 

In August 2024, Arloa was “born from folks coming in with multiple binders full of documentation and just story after story about not being able to find the resources that they need or being confused by terminology and jargon and feeling overwhelmed,” Alex Nork, one of the founding engineers of Arloa, told me.  

Hailed as an “AI assistant for special education,” Arloa allows users to upload IEP (Individualized Education Program) documents and then it will “synthesize this vast amount of data and present it in a way that can be easily consumed,” Nork explained.  It is an online IEP binder with an AI twist. 

Privacy comes first 

When IEPs meet the digital demigod, the first priority is privacy and security. Nork emphasized Arloa’s commitment to keeping your child’s information protected and secure. The company has agreements with Anthropic and OpenAI, its AI vendors, to keep information and personally identifiable information (PII) secure. 

What it can do 

My clients’ most common struggles with special education are appropriate IEP goals, progress monitoring, and effective participation at IEP team meetings. I took a test run through Arloa to see if it could help my families advocate for their children.  

1.  Goals 

The goal section allows parents to enter goals and objectives, as well as observations. The application also generates insights, “which pull from all areas of the child’s profile,” Nork told me. Arloa uses AI to evaluate goals and provide potential recommendations, tips and reminders.

2. Progress Monitoring

Parents want to understand and contribute to progress monitoring. Arloa allows parents to add detailed observation data to goals and also suggests activities to support progress at home. Collecting this data, and providing it to the IEP team, could improve collaboration.

3. Communication

Ever cringe when writing a letter to the school? Too formal? Too angry? Too all the things? Arloa can assist with this unpleasant task. Arloa can also guide parents through creating a vision statement and an IEP One Pager. 

4. The IEP report card

This is the big one: Arloa uses AI to evaluate your child’s IEP. The platform provides recommendations for improvement, and a 1-100 quality score for such things as accommodations, family engagement and progress measurement.  

Advocacy strategies 

I encourage families to use AI to help them advocate, and Arloa comes packaged to support. Easier than a general chatbot, the application offers help for parents in many ways. 

• Preparing for an IEP meeting: From creating lists of questions, to providing recommendations for improved IEP goals, Arloa can improve and simplify IEP meeting preparation. 

• A vision statement: Nork and the Arloa team stressed the importance of a vision statement, “what you're aiming for long term,” he told me. Arloa includes “communication templates (to help) generate at least a starting point for a vision statement,” he said. Arloa pulls information from your child’s profile to guide you through the process. 

• Monitoring progress: Adding detailed observations to each goal provides performance data that the IEP team can consider when monitoring your child’s progress. If you are comfortable sharing your login, then community-based therapy providers could also provide observations. 

• Additional goals: If you are like me, you have goals for your child at home that align with IEP goals. For example, if a child has an IEP goal to follow multi-step directions, and you are working on cooking skills at home, you can create an at-home, multi-step directions goal for following recipes. As a teacher, I valued the information provided by the parent when they created at-home goals, as it supports the child in generalizing new skills and abilities. 

The dream and the reality 

AI in special education should always begin and end with humans. When using an AI-assisted IEP binder, parents should be aware that the AI does not understand the context of the child’s educational environment unless it is trained. For example, is there a shortage of teachers and service providers? Is the district committed to keeping students with IEPs in the general education setting? Is the child being bullied?  

Some of these considerations can (and should) be entered into Arloa’s system as traits. However, parents — as the humans in the H-AI-H equation — need to cautiously review and revise all AI generated content. Even if you have provided a great deal of contextual information, you still know the working of the IEP team, and your child, better than the online oracle. 

Next week 

The IEP binder and you: a love-hate relationship .

This column is written by Shannon Sankstone, she is an Olympia-based special education advocate and the owner of Advocacy Unlocked. She may be reached at ShannonSankstone@theJOLTnews.com.