After years of both managing compliance as an administrator and being audited by one, I can say the same handful of issues show up in nearly every file review — regardless of district size or resources. None of them are complicated to fix. Most are a matter of building the right habit into your calendar.
Evaluation timelines, annual review dates, and three-year reevaluation windows are the most common finding in any audit. The fix isn't better memory — it's a tracking system that flags deadlines 30 and 10 days out, owned by someone whose job it is to check it weekly, not "whoever remembers."
A goal should be a direct, logical next step from the present level of performance described just above it. Reviewers look for that connection first. If the present level says a student reads at a 3rd-grade level with 70% comprehension accuracy, the goal needs to reference that same skill and metric — not a different one entirely.
This is the gap between what's on paper and what's happening in the classroom, and it's the single most common issue I find when I sit in on general education classes during an audit. Accommodations need to be communicated to every teacher who works with the student — not just filed in a folder — and there should be some way to verify they're actually happening, whether that's a quick check-in form or a walkthrough.
Parents must receive procedural safeguards notice at key points — initial referral, each notice of a meeting, and reevaluation, among others. Even when this happens, it's frequently undocumented. If it isn't written down, in a compliance review, it didn't happen.
LRE should be a placement decision that follows from the student's needs and goals — not a decision made first based on program availability, with services then justified around it. Auditors and due process hearings both look closely at whether the team considered the general education setting first, with supports, before considering a more restrictive placement.
Goals need data collected on the schedule stated in the IEP — not gathered retroactively before the annual review. Gaps in progress monitoring data are an easy, avoidable finding, and they also mean the team is making decisions about a student's program without real information.
Parents are entitled to meaningful advance notice, in a language and format they understand, with enough detail to participate. A notice sent the day before a meeting, or one that doesn't clearly explain the meeting's purpose, is a procedural violation even if the meeting itself goes well.
Every one of these issues is preventable, but a checklist alone won't fix them — the schools that stay in compliance treat it as a shared responsibility across special education staff, general education teachers, and administration, with someone specifically accountable for tracking timelines and someone reviewing files before problems compound. A yearly self-audit, done honestly, catches almost everything a state monitoring visit would find.
Not sure where your program stands? A compliance audit gives you a clear, written picture — and a plan to close any gaps before they become findings. Schedule a consultation or learn more about compliance audits.