Question 1

Do I need to buy special hardware?

Accepted Answer

No. SPEDScribe works with any audio recording — your phone, a laptop mic, or a browser-based recorder built into the platform. We recommend a clinical-grade wearable recorder for the best audio quality, but it's not required. During the free ESY pilot, use whatever you already have.

Question 2

Does the AI write the entire IEP?

Accepted Answer

No. The AI generates draft documentation — SOAP notes, PLAAFP statements, annual goals, progress reports — from session transcripts and evaluation data. A licensed provider reviews, edits, and approves every document before it becomes official. The AI handles the paperwork; the clinician retains full clinical judgment.

Question 3

How does it handle students with multiple providers?

Accepted Answer

Every provider on a student's IEP team can see session notes from other disciplines (read-only). The SLP sees the OT's most recent note. The school psych sees everyone's data before writing the annual review. No more working in silos.

Question 4

What about students being recorded — do parents need to consent?

Accepted Answer

Yes. California is a two-party consent state for recordings. Districts will need to include recording consent in their standard IEP consent procedures. We provide template consent language that districts can incorporate into their existing forms. Many districts already have consent procedures for telehealth recordings that can be adapted.

Question 5

What if the recording quality is bad?

Accepted Answer

The transcription service flags low-confidence segments. If the audio is too poor to transcribe accurately, the system marks those sections with [AUDIO UNCLEAR] rather than guessing. The provider can fill in from memory during the review step. Even a partial transcription saves significant documentation time.

Question 6

How do you prevent the AI from making things up?

Accepted Answer

Every clinical claim must cite specific transcript evidence. The system never fabricates test scores, accuracy percentages, or assessment data. When the transcript is ambiguous, the AI inserts [CLINICIAN REVIEW NEEDED] flags rather than guessing. When provider descriptions seem inconsistent with score interpretation bands, it inserts [VERIFY] flags. And every document goes through mandatory human review before approval.

Question 7

Does the AI understand my specific discipline?

Accepted Answer

Yes. SPEDScribe has discipline-specific documentation models for SLPs, OTs, school psychologists, BCBAs, SPED teachers, APE specialists, and DHH professionals. An SLP SOAP note looks fundamentally different from a BCBA session note — different clinical vocabulary, different data structures, different goal frameworks. Our AI knows the difference.

Question 8

What languages does SPEDScribe support for parent translations?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe generates parent-facing clinical summaries in 16 languages covering California's largest non-English student populations: Spanish, Hmong, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Filipino/Tagalog, Korean, Punjabi, Farsi/Persian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Pashto, and Dari. These are clinical-grade translations — not machine translation — designed to accurately convey SPED terminology in culturally appropriate language. Each language also has built-in L1 transfer pattern intelligence so the AI can distinguish language differences from speech-language disorders.

Question 9

Can it help with bilingual students?

Accepted Answer

This is one of our key differentiators. SPEDScribe has built-in L1 transfer pattern databases for the 16 California languages we support: Spanish, Hmong, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Filipino/Tagalog, Korean, Punjabi, Farsi/Persian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Pashto, and Dari. The AI flags expected language transfer patterns versus potential disorder indicators, recommends bilingual assessment protocols like the BESA, and ensures documentation addresses difference-versus-disorder analysis per ASHA guidelines.

Question 10

Does SPEDScribe generate IEP content or just session notes?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe generates the full pipeline: session audio → SOAP note → Present Levels (PLAAFP) → measurable annual goals → progress reports. Each stage builds on the previous one, so your IEP documentation is generated from actual session data rather than written from memory.

Question 11

What clinical standards does the AI reference?

Accepted Answer

The full list is public at spedscribe.ai/clinical-standards — 80+ standardized assessment tools across 7 disciplines, with score interpretation bands, IEP goal translation guidance, and bilingual considerations for each. The AI also enforces the Endrew F. 'appropriately ambitious' standard, the Condition-Behavior-Criterion goal framework, and California Education Code timelines.

Question 12

Will it catch errors my providers miss?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The AI cross-references session data against the student's evaluation history and current IEP goals. It flags when session content doesn't address documented goal areas, when data suggests a student is ready to advance, when error patterns appear that aren't captured in current goals, and when progress data shows regression. Every flag is a suggestion — the provider decides whether to act on it.

Question 13

Is student data safe?

Accepted Answer

All personally identifiable information is scrubbed from transcripts before any AI model sees the data. Student names, parent names, dates of birth, and school identifiers are replaced with tokens. Original PII is stored in a separate encrypted vault (AES-256). The AI only ever processes de-identified text.

Question 14

HIPAA or FERPA — which applies?

Accepted Answer

FERPA. Most K-12 schools are not HIPAA covered entities. Student health records maintained by schools are education records under FERPA, explicitly excluded from HIPAA's definition of protected health information (per joint HHS/ED guidance, 2008/2019). We comply with both standards, but we know which one governs. That distinction alone separates us from most EdTech companies.

Question 15

What about California's student data privacy laws?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe is fully compliant with AB 1584 (pupil records remain LEA property, no non-educational use, breach notification, data deletion on termination) and SOPIPA (no advertising to students, no selling student data, no profiling for non-educational purposes). Our data architecture structurally prevents non-educational use of student data.

Question 16

Who owns the data?

Accepted Answer

The district owns all student data. Period. Per AB 1584, pupil records remain the property of the local educational agency. We process and store data on behalf of the district under the FERPA school official exception. Upon contract termination, all district data is returned and then deleted from our systems.

Question 17

Does the AI learn from student data?

Accepted Answer

No. Anthropic does not use API inputs for model training by default, and we configure every API call accordingly. AssemblyAI processes audio in real-time and does not retain recordings after transcription. Session transcripts are processed, documentation is generated, and no student data is retained by either upstream AI service. Our own platform retains data only for the duration specified in the district contract.

Question 18

How long does setup take?

Accepted Answer

Providers can start using SPEDScribe within a single training session. There's no IT infrastructure to deploy — it's a web application. The only setup is account creation, consent form distribution, and a 30-minute provider training on the record-generate-review workflow.

Question 19

Does it integrate with SEIS?

Accepted Answer

Not directly — SEIS doesn't have a public API for content injection. SPEDScribe generates documentation that maps to SEIS form field structures. Providers copy and paste the generated content into SEIS, or use our structured SEIS export file. Direct integration is on the roadmap.

Question 20

What about districts that don't use SEIS?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe exports to any IEP platform. Copy to clipboard works with anything. The SEIS export is California-specific, but we can add export templates for EasyIEP, PowerSchool, or any other system based on district needs.

Question 21

What does the free ESY pilot include?

Accepted Answer

Full platform access during the ESY window (June-July 2026). All documentation types: SOAP notes, progress reports, PLAAFP drafts, goal generation. Up to your full ESY provider team. We measure time saved, documentation quality, and provider satisfaction. Zero cost, zero commitment. If it doesn't work for your team, you walk away.

Question 22

What does it cost per provider?

Accepted Answer

Essentials is $499/provider/month and covers SOAP note generation, progress reports, SEIS export, and English parent summaries. Professional is $749/provider/month and adds the full IEP Document Suite (PLAAFP, annual goals, progress reports), multilingual parent reports, Clinical Copilot, compliance timeline tracking, and Director Dashboard. Enterprise is custom-priced. Only licensed providers who generate documentation count as seats — directors and reviewers are not billed.

Question 23

What's the ROI?

Accepted Answer

At a loaded provider cost of $45/hour, recovering 10 hours per week of documentation time equals $450/week per provider — that's $1,948/month in recovered time per provider. Against $499/month (Essentials), that's a 3.9:1 return on documentation time alone. The interactive calculator at spedscribe.ai/roi lets you plug in your district's actual numbers and includes turnover, litigation, and contractor costs.

Question 24

Are there per-session or per-document fees?

Accepted Answer

No. The subscription is per licensed provider, per month. Generate as many documents as your team needs. There are no per-session charges, no per-document fees, and no usage caps.

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