Pennsylvania IEP requirements: the Chapter 14 rules teachers actually work under

Pennsylvania layers its own rules — 22 Pa. Code Chapter 14 — on top of the federal IDEA floor, and it comes with its own vocabulary: the evaluation is an ER, the reevaluation is an RR, prior written notice is a NOREP/PWN, and the state's training arm is PaTTAN. Where Texas says ARD, Florida says ESE, and New York says CSE, Pennsylvania mostly keeps the term “IEP team” — but the paperwork around it is unmistakably its own. The IEP itself is still the core SPED document; here is the PA process wrapped around it, with every deadline cited.

Every Pennsylvania deadline in one table

Chapter 14 citations from the official Pennsylvania Code text; IEP meeting and implementation timelines from PaTTAN's annotated IEP form.

The 60-calendar-day clock — and the summer pause that surprises everyone

Pennsylvania's evaluation timeline is 60 calendar days from written parental consent, not the “60 days or state-established timeframe” placeholder in the federal regulation. The twist is the exclusion: the days from the day after the spring term ends through the day before the fall term starts do not count (§14.123(b)). A Permission to Evaluate signed May 20 doesn't produce a September 1 deadline — the clock freezes all summer and resumes in fall. Case managers fielding parent frustration about a “late” summer evaluation should walk through this math explicitly; the same pause applies to reevaluations (§14.124(b)). Two adjacent rules are easy to miss: an oral request for evaluation obligates the school to hand over the Permission to Evaluate form within 10 calendar days (§14.123(c)), and the finished ER must reach parents at least 10 school days before the IEP meeting unless they waive it in writing (§14.123(d)) — no walking into the meeting with a report the parents are seeing for the first time.

NOREP/PWN: the form that gates implementation

Pennsylvania combines prior written notice and placement recommendation into one document, the NOREP/PWN. Per PaTTAN's annotated IEP, a final IEP must be implemented as soon as possible and no later than 10 school days after it's presented to the parent — but when a NOREP/PWN is issued, the district waits until the 11th calendar day after presenting it, giving parents their response window. For students with (or thought to have) an intellectual disability, Chapter 14 adds a delivery rule: mailed notice goes by certified mail, addressee only, return receipt requested (§14.153). If your district's IEP software prints a NOREP with every annual review, this is why.

Four Pennsylvania rules with no federal twin

• Transition at 14. The transition plan — measurable postsecondary goals for training, education, employment, and where appropriate independent living — belongs in the IEP in effect when the student turns 14, two years ahead of the federal age-16 floor (§14.131(a)(5)). Pennsylvania sits with Texas at 14, versus 14½ in Illinois, 15 in New York, and 12 in Florida.
• Two-year reevaluations for intellectual disability. Most students are reevaluated every three years; students identified with an intellectual disability must be reevaluated at least every two (§14.124(c)).
• ESY has hard calendar dates for severe disabilities. For students with severe disabilities (the regulation names autism/PDD, serious emotional disturbance, severe intellectual disability, degenerative impairments, severe multiple disabilities), the ESY-eligibility IEP review must happen by February 28 and the NOREP must issue by March 31 (§14.132(d)) — so summer services can be challenged and resolved before summer. The eligibility standard itself is the regression–recoupment analysis covered in our ESY eligibility guide, which §14.132 spells out in seven factors, no single one determinative.
• The 15-day discipline line. Federally, removals beyond 10 consecutive school days are a change of placement; Pennsylvania additionally deems 15 cumulative school days in a school year a pattern that is a change of placement (§14.143(a)) — which forces the manifestation-determination machinery to run. For students with an intellectual disability, any removal is a change of placement outside the special-circumstances cases (§14.143(b)).

What this means for your caseload

The compliance shape of a Pennsylvania caseload: annual reviews on a rolling 12-month cycle with summer due dates pulled forward (the IEP must be in effect when school opens — PaTTAN is explicit that summer annual reviews can't wait for September), RRs tracked on two different cycles depending on disability category, ESY decisions front-loaded into February–March for the severe-disability group, and suspension days counted cumulatively against the 15-day line, not just consecutively. That's four different clocks per student. A caseload compliance calendar handles the recurring dates; the state-specific check — whether each IEP actually satisfies Chapter 14's content rules on top of the federal component list — is the part worth automating.

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