Article 7 counts Indiana’s deadlines in instructional days, and the CCC ends the first fifty
Any teacher, counselor, principal or school psychologist in Indiana can take your request for an educational evaluation, spoken or written. The signature you return opens fifty instructional days, and the case conference committee has to meet inside them. Start with the dates in your file: the day the school received your written request, the day you signed consent, and the date on the district’s latest notice.
How a child gets an IEP in Indiana
Two names on the letter
Article 7 lets you ask a teacher out loud, so write the same request to your principal and the district special education director.
Watch the tenth day
Written notice proposing or refusing the evaluation is owed inside ten instructional days, and it has to list the records behind the answer.
Ask on the consent form
Two boxes on the consent form matter: one sends the evaluation report early, the other gets you a meeting to have it explained.
Read before the CCC
The case conference committee decides eligibility and writes the IEP, so bring the scores you want explained out loud.
The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.
Office of Special Education — Complaints, mediation and hearing requests move through I-CHAMP, the department’s online portal, and this office answers questions about Article 7.
What qualifies a child in Indiana
Eligibility is the CCC’s call in Indiana, and Article 7 asks that committee for a category and a need, in that order.
- Thirteen categories fill Article 7, from autism spectrum disorder to traumatic brain injury.
- No single test decides it, so ask the CCC which measures moved the finding.
- A child who needs only transportation or occupational therapy falls outside Article 7 here.
What the rule says
The state wrote it this way:
“The initial educational evaluation must be conducted and the CCC convened within fifty (50) instructional days of the date the written parental consent is received by licensed personnel …”
511 IAC 7-40-5(d)
Instructional days are days school is open, so a June signature starts a count that waits for classes.
The deadlines Indiana sets
School days and calendar days count differently, so read the unit in every row.
| What is being counted | By when | How it is counted |
|---|---|---|
| Written notice after your request | 10 days of instruction | Counting starts the day you asked, and any day school is closed sits outside it.511 IAC 7-40-4(d) |
| Evaluation and the CCC meeting | 50 days of instruction | Written consent reaching licensed personnel opens it, and Indiana puts the eligibility meeting inside the same count.511 IAC 7-40-5(d) |
| The report you asked for | 5 days of instruction | The scheduled CCC date is what it runs back from, and only a request on the consent form earns it.511 IAC 7-40-5(h) |
| Services on the first IEP | 10 days of instruction | Consent to that first IEP starts them, so ask the teacher of record when each service began.511 IAC 7-42-8(a)(1) |
| Mediation once both sides agree | 20 calendar days | A written agreement to mediate opens it, and that agreement is also what extends the state’s own clock.511 IAC 7-45-1(h) |
| I-CHAMP, then a decision | 40 calendar days | Indiana opens this on the day I-CHAMP receives your signed complaint, and reaches back twelve months.511 IAC 7-45-1(l), (c) |
What Indiana adds to the federal floor
IDEA is the floor, not the ceiling. What a state adds on top is what you can ask for by name.
- A teacher of record
- One special education teacher is assigned to your child here, the teacher of record, and federal law names nobody at all.
- Transition at grade nine
- Federal transition planning waits for sixteen. A transition IEP has to be in effect when your child enters grade nine or turns fourteen.
- A faster complaint clock
- A complaint answered in forty calendar days beats the federal clock, and you file it on I-CHAMP with a copy to your school corporation.
If the school says no
The written notice is the refusal in Indiana, and a request that drew nothing at all has passed its tenth day.
- Article 7 lists what that notice must contain in 511 IAC 7-40-4(e), so read it against the letter you got.
- Send the same request again in writing, and name the person who took the first one.
- Attach the dates and the rule number, because the investigator assigned to it works from the file you send.
A refusal arrives in writing under 34 CFR 300.503, naming what was refused and the data behind it.
This page organizes the state’s own words: it does not replace the current rule text, or advice from someone qualified in your state.
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Where this comes from
- Article 7, Indiana’s special education rulesThe quoted rule, in full.
- Indiana Department of Education, Office of Special EducationWhere Indiana posts guidance.
- How to file a special education complaintThe forty-day clock, and I-CHAMP.
- The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.