School Not Following the IEP in Maryland: What You Can Do About It

The IEP says 60 minutes of speech therapy per week. Your child has received maybe 15 minutes in the past month because the therapist keeps being pulled for other duties. Or the reading specialist who was supposed to provide direct instruction three times a week is on indefinite leave and nobody has been hired to cover. Or the aide hours written into the IEP evaporated when the school year began and nobody mentioned it.

This is IEP non-implementation, and it happens at an alarming rate in Maryland. In the 2024–2025 reporting year, the MSDE Office of the Inspector General for Education logged 583 formal complaints across the state — and IEP implementation failures are among the most common violations. Prince George's County alone generated 93 complaints; Baltimore County, 72.

When a school is not following the IEP, you have legal remedies. But they require you to act quickly and in writing.

Why Schools Don't Follow IEPs

Understanding why this happens helps you respond to it. The most common causes in Maryland are:

Staff vacancies and turnover. Related service providers — speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists — are in chronic short supply across Maryland, especially in Baltimore City, Prince George's County, and rural districts on the Eastern Shore. When a therapist leaves mid-year, the district may take weeks or months to hire a replacement, and your child's IEP services simply stop.

Administrative oversight and miscommunication. In large districts like Montgomery County or Anne Arundel County, IEP implementation can break down between the central office that wrote the IEP and the building staff responsible for delivering services. The IEP specifies services; the school schedule doesn't accommodate them.

Budget-driven de facto reduction. Some districts quietly allow IEP services to be reduced without formally amending the IEP. No one tells the parent. The service minutes are simply not happening.

In all of these cases, the district's internal challenges do not legally excuse non-implementation. Under IDEA and COMAR 13A.05.01, the obligation to deliver IEP services is absolute. The district cannot cite staffing shortages or budget constraints as a justification for failing to implement a legally binding document.

Step 1: Document the Gap Before You Do Anything Else

Before you contact the school, document what you know. Create a written log with the following:

• The specific services your child's IEP prescribes (service type, frequency, duration, provider)
• The dates and duration of services your child has actually received, to the best of your knowledge
• Any communications — emails, teacher notes, phone calls you've taken notes on — that indicate services are being missed

If you don't have direct knowledge of missed sessions, ask your child (age-appropriately), review any therapy logs the school sends home, and send a written request for a service delivery log: "Please provide a written record of all [speech therapy/OT/other service] sessions delivered to [child's name] from [start of school year] to the present, including dates, duration, and the name of the service provider."

That records request is itself a formal communication and starts creating your paper trail.

Step 2: Send a Formal Written Notice to the Special Education Director

Do not start with the classroom teacher or building principal. Address your complaint to the Director of Special Education for your local school system (LEA). Copy the principal.

Your letter should:

• Identify your child and reference the current IEP by date
• State specifically which services are not being delivered and over what timeframe
• Reference the legal obligation: "Under IDEA and COMAR 13A.05.01, the district is required to implement the IEP as written. Staffing challenges or internal resource constraints do not suspend this obligation."
• Request a specific remedy: immediate resumption of services, and a compensatory education plan addressing the sessions already missed
• Set a response deadline: 10 business days for a written response

Send the letter by email (gives you a timestamp) and follow up with certified mail if the situation is serious. Keep copies of everything.

Step 3: Demand Compensatory Education for Missed Services

When a district fails to implement an IEP, the legal remedy is compensatory education — additional services, provided prospectively, to make the student whole. Maryland's MSDE has the authority to order compensatory education when it investigates a State Complaint and finds violations.

Compensatory education is not a gift the district volunteers. You must specifically request it. In your complaint letter, include explicit language: "I am requesting a compensatory education plan that identifies the number of sessions missed and how and when equivalent services will be provided to [child's name]."

When you receive the district's response, review it carefully. A compensatory plan that says "services will resume next month" without addressing the sessions already missed is not adequate. You want a specific schedule: which sessions are owed, when they will occur, and with which provider.

Step 4: File an MSDE State Complaint If the District Doesn't Respond

If the district fails to respond to your letter, provides a vague non-answer, or refuses to commit to compensatory education, your next step is filing a formal State Complaint with the MSDE Family Support and Dispute Resolution Branch.

A State Complaint:

• Is free to file
• Does not require a lawyer
• Triggers a 60-day investigation by MSDE
• Can result in a Letter of Findings that orders the district to provide compensatory services and implement corrective actions

MSDE State Complaints are particularly well-suited to IEP implementation violations because the facts are usually documentable: the IEP says X, the service log shows Y, and the gap is the violation. You are not asking an Administrative Law Judge to evaluate the substantive appropriateness of the IEP — just whether the district followed the document it signed.

One critical point: you must file within one year of the date of the violation. If services stopped in September, file before next September. Don't wait.

What About Due Process?

Due process hearings at the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings are appropriate for disputes about whether the IEP itself provides an adequate education — its goals, placement, services. For IEP implementation failures, State Complaints are generally more efficient and less costly.

Due process is adversarial, expensive (Maryland special education attorneys bill at an average of $344 per hour), and Maryland parents currently win only about 19% of OAH due process hearings. For a documented non-implementation case, escalating to an MSDE State Complaint first makes more strategic sense in most situations.

Keep the Pressure Consistent and Written

The most effective Maryland parents treat IEP non-implementation as a compliance management problem, not an emotional dispute. Every communication goes in writing. Every response — or non-response — is documented with a date. When the district hears from you consistently, in writing, citing specific COMAR provisions and requesting specific remedies, the calculus changes.

The Maryland IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook includes step-by-step templates for every stage of this process — from the initial complaint letter through the compensatory education request — and a documentation tracker that organizes your evidence before you escalate.

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