The Case Manager's Complete Field Guide: From First Contact to Finished IEP

Stop managing IEPs. Start managing the system that runs them.

Most case managers are handed a caseload and a due-date calendar — and left to figure out the rest through trial, error, and hard meetings. This guide is the system I wish I'd been handed on day one.

After more than 20 years as a special education case manager and team lead in Illinois, I built a step-by-step system that turns a chaotic caseload into a process you can run with confidence — from the first phone call before school starts to the moment you hand a parent a finished IEP.

This is not theory. Every script, protocol, and template has been stress-tested in real meetings, with real parents, under real compliance deadlines.

What's inside:

• The complete 8-step system — from first contact with families through post-meeting documentation, with every step built to the same actionable depth

• The Progress Monitoring System — domain-specific data collection for executive functioning, reading, writing, and math, plus the compliance-vs-independence distinction that separates real progress from a number that only looks good

• From Data to Placement — the Service Minute Allocation Matrix and LRE framework that make your minutes and placement recommendations defensible

• Word-for-word scripts — first-contact calls, the opening question that changes everything, emotional and combative parent protocols, and the meeting-closing sequence

• "What This Step Prevents" callouts — connecting each step to the exact legal dispute it's designed to avoid

• Integrated Illinois legal deadlines — so you never look up a timeline in the middle of a crisis

• Ready-to-use appendices — sample present levels, sample goals, six data tracking forms, and a complete 16-item IEP meeting agenda template

• Elementary, middle, and high school adaptations throughout

Who it's for: K–12 special education case managers — whether you're in your first year and want a system, or your fifteenth and want to sharpen one. Built around Illinois IDEA requirements; the system and scripts apply anywhere.

What you get: A professionally formatted, 70+ page digital guide (PDF/Word), instantly downloadable.

What is best for the student is always the right answer — even when it's the harder one. This guide is how you get there with confidence.

— Paul Hartung, M.S. LEA Special Education Case Manager & Team Lead | K–12 · Chicago's Northwest Suburbs cleareducationaladvocacy.com