Monday morning, the IEP is already live. Not a draft for October. Not a file that lives in a cabinet. IDEA says each public agency must have an IEP in effect at the start of the school year, and that IEP has to be accessible to the teachers and providers who implement it. The starting GPS is not a grade, a score, or a hallway impression. It is present levels of academic achievement and functional performance. If that statement only records how the student “appears fine,” the