Your child's IEP should say what you mean.
Special education runs on documents most parents were never taught to read. We read them with you, line by line, and then we come to the meeting and say it out loud.
Where would you like to start?
See what we do
Assessments, IEP meetings, transition and behavior plans, placement, and connections to trusted providers.
Our services →Decode the jargon
Six phrases that decide what your child gets, translated into plain terms, with the question worth asking.
Open the decoder →Meet the team
A small team led by founder Scott Rudolph, which is the point. You work with the people on this page.
About us →Every review. Five stars.
From Google and Yelp reviews of Rudolph Advocacy Works. Shared with thanks to the families who wrote them.
Six places where the wording matters most.
Each of these is a document, a meeting, or a decision where one vague sentence can quietly reduce what your child receives all year.
Assessment
We read evaluation reports for what they actually establish, and press for further testing when the picture is incomplete.
IEP meetings
Preparation beforehand, an advocate beside you during, and a written record of what was agreed to afterward.
Transition plans
Post-secondary planning tied to real adult services and real goals, not a checkbox filed away at 18.
Behavior plans
We check that a BIP addresses the function of the behavior and teaches a replacement, rather than only listing consequences.
Placement
We advocate for the least restrictive appropriate setting, based on your child's needs rather than what happens to be available.
Resource connections
Introductions to providers, regional center services, and community programs that carry support past the school day.
Three ways to work together
Learn & advocate on your own
Self-paced courses and plain-language guides, so you walk in understanding the process and what to ask for.
IEP advocacy support
We prepare with you and attend the meetings that matter, speaking up when needs get compressed into boilerplate.
most families start hereOngoing advocacy & support
Year-round partnership, tracking progress and stepping in before small issues become formal disputes.
Six phrases that decide what your child gets.
These come up in nearly every meeting. Tap one to see what it actually means, and the question worth asking when you hear it.
A small team, which is the point.
Rudolph Advocacy Works was founded by Scott Rudolph, a former special education teacher and district administrator, to help families navigate special education with confidence, from a first IEP meeting through the most complicated transition or behavior plan. We center our work on respect, transparency, and partnership with schools, because when families and educators pull in the same direction, students win. When you work with us, you work with the people on this page.
Former special ed teacher, site administrator, and district special education leader.
Read Scott's full bio ↓
Works alongside families across evaluations, goal writing, and behavior planning.
Handles scheduling, agreements, and billing so the advocacy work stays uninterrupted.
✎ Read Scott's full bio
Scott Rudolph, M.Ed.
Founder & Special Education AdvocateScott Rudolph is the founder of Rudolph Advocacy Works and a former special education teacher, school administrator, and district-level special education administrator with extensive experience supporting students with disabilities, families, educators, and school teams.
Scott spent nine years as a special education teacher, serving students in Resource Specialist Program (RSP), Special Day Class (SDC), and autism-focused resource settings. His classroom experience gave him a firsthand understanding of what effective special education looks like in practice, from developing and implementing IEPs and accommodations to collaborating with families, service providers, general education teachers, and multidisciplinary teams.
He later moved into school and district leadership, accumulating four years of administrative experience. As an Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction and Section 504 Coordinator, Scott supported schoolwide instructional programming, intervention systems, student support teams, and the development and implementation of Section 504 Plans.
Scott then served as a district-level Manager of Special Education, overseeing special education implementation across five school sites. His responsibilities included supporting IEP teams and administrators, monitoring programs and services, overseeing MTSS and SST processes, assisting with preschool assessment and eligibility systems, coordinating county and nonpublic school placements, and working closely with district leadership and legal counsel on complex special education matters.
A significant part of Scott's district-level work also focused on inclusive education and program development. Over a two-year period, he helped develop and implement full-inclusion programming at two school sites, working directly with teachers, paraprofessionals, and administrators to build sustainable inclusive practices. He provided training, coaching, and ongoing implementation support to school teams on effective inclusion, collaboration, and best practices for supporting students with disabilities within general education environments.
That combination of classroom, school-site, and district-level experience now informs Scott's work as a special education advocate. Through Rudolph Advocacy Works, he supports families throughout California with IEPs, Section 504 Plans, assessments and eligibility, Independent Educational Evaluations (IEEs), goals and services, accommodations, behavior and safety supports, placement, assistive technology, transition planning, and complex disagreements with school districts.
Scott also provides professional development and parent education. He partners with organizations such as Foster the Family to provide trainings for parents and families and works with local organizations, service providers, and professionals on special education best practices, IEP collaboration, inclusion, and developing educationally meaningful and defensible Independent Educational Evaluations and reports.
Scott holds a Master's degree in Educational Administration, a Bachelor's degree in Communication Studies, and a California Education Specialist Teaching Credential.
Having worked as a teacher, administrator, district special education leader, and now advocate, Scott brings a unique perspective to his work with families. He understands how school systems operate from the inside, but his role today is clear: helping families understand their rights, navigate the special education process with confidence, and advocate for educational programs that meaningfully meet their child's individual needs.
What colleagues say
From educators Scott has worked alongside as a supervisor and team lead.
He truly does it all. He manages a full caseload of neurodiverse students and is not only well-versed in the legal requirements pertaining to students with disabilities in education, but goes beyond these requirements to foster strong relationships with students. He is the strong leader to a team of special education professionals who help fulfill the needs of neurodiverse students at our school. Scott is communicative, thorough, and an all-around expert.
I had the pleasure of working side by side with Mr. Rudolph as my program specialist supervisor and district intern support person. During the year that I worked with him, Mr. Rudolph offered me the flexibility and support to guide me with IEP questions in my first year of teaching. It was overall a pleasure to work with him.
Start with a conversation.
Tell us roughly where things stand. We'll follow up to talk through what's happening and which level of support actually fits, even if that turns out to be none of ours.
Email · scott@rudolphadvocacyworks.org
Based in · Campbell, CA · supporting families throughout California and beyond
Professional learning that changes what happens on Monday.
Rudolph Academy Works is the professional learning and professional development practice of Rudolph Advocacy Works. We partner with schools, districts, and community organizations to build the everyday practices that serve students with disabilities well: High-Leverage Practices, inclusive programming, para-educator capacity, and IEP teams that collaborate instead of collide.
Built for the people closest to the student.
Special education directors and district leaders
Program review, systems design, and multi-site implementation support. We read your data with you, not at you, and build responses your sites can actually carry.
Site administrators and school teams
Inclusive scheduling, co-teaching launches, MTSS and SST processes, and the leadership moves that keep new practice alive after the training day.
Para-educators and related service staff
Explicit instruction, behavior support, data collection, and role clarity for the adults who deliver most of the minutes students with disabilities receive.
Community organizations and parent groups
Family education on IEPs, rights, and collaboration, delivered in plain language and in partnership with organizations already trusted by the families they serve.
What we help teams get better at.
High-Leverage Practices
Implementation of the 2024 pillar practices across a site or program, with coaching cycles that keep the work alive past the first semester.
Inclusive programming and co-teaching
Designing and launching full-inclusion models, LRE decision-making, and co-teaching structures that hold up under real schedules and real staffing.
Para-educator capacity
Job-embedded training on explicit instruction, behavior basics, prompting and fading, and the data habits that make paras full members of the team.
MTSS and UDL
Tiered systems that connect general and special education instead of running them side by side, with universal design built into Tier 1 rather than bolted on later.
Behavior systems
PBIS and SEL alignment, consistent environments across every adult, replacement-behavior planning, and functional behavior assessment practices that hold up to scrutiny.
IEP quality and team collaboration
Measurable goals, present levels grounded in current data, prior written notice done well, and meetings that families leave trusting the team.
Disproportionality
Examining identification, placement, and discipline patterns together, then building responses that are practical and instructional rather than punitive.
Family and community education
Parent workshops and organizational partnerships, including ongoing training work with groups such as Foster the Family.
From one staff meeting to a full year.
Most partnerships start small and grow as trust does. Every format includes practice, not just presentation.
Staff meeting or PLC slot
One practice, taught explicitly, with one thing every person in the room commits to trying this week.
Hands-on practice day
Rehearsal with your scenarios, your students, and your materials. Teams leave with plans, not just notes.
Spaced learning with feedback
Sessions spread across a semester with observation, coaching, and adjustment in between. This is where practice actually changes.
Coaching cycles and leadership support
Regular coaching, data reviews, and administrator check-ins so the work survives turnover, testing season, and everything else a school year throws at it.
Collaborative by design.
We start with your data
Dashboard indicators, program reviews, staff and family input. We read it together and let the team name what it sees before anyone proposes a fix.
We practice, not present
Every session includes modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. If a team cannot try it before they leave the room, we have not finished the session.
We build your capacity
The measure of a good partnership is that your team needs us less over time. Materials, protocols, and coaching skills stay with you.
What we do not do: we are not English language development specialists. When EL instruction is central to the work, we say so and connect you with people who are.
Now booking 2026-27 partnerships.
Rudolph Academy Works is led by Scott Rudolph, M.Ed., a former special education teacher, site administrator, and district-level special education manager who has built full-inclusion programs from the ground up and trained the teams that run them. Research and university-based partners join engagements when systems-level or data work calls for it.
Planning calls are free. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit, and who is if we are not.
Free micro-courses from Rudolph Academy Works. Short, practical, and built for the adults around the IEP table. Each one takes under half an hour and leaves you with something you can use tomorrow.
IEP Bootcamp
The IEP process from first referral to signature: what each document is for, how to read Present Levels, what makes a goal real, and what to do when you disagree.
Start the bootcamp →What Are HLPs?
A plain-language tour of the 22 High-Leverage Practices, the four domains they live in, and where para-educators fit in every one of them.
Start the course →Micro-Learning: Explicit Instruction (HLP 16)
I do, we do, you do. How to model, guide practice, give feedback, and fade support so students end up doing the work, not you.
Start the micro-course →Micro-Learning: Behavior Basics (HLP 7 & 8)
Environment first, teach the "do instead," and use positive specific feedback. The daily moves that prevent most behavior problems before they start.
Start the micro-course →Looking for team or district training? Scott also delivers live professional development on inclusion, IEP collaboration, and special education best practices. Get in touch.
IEP Bootcamp
Everything here is general information to help you participate with confidence, not legal advice for your specific situation.
1Know the players and the paperwork
An IEP (Individualized Education Program) is a legal document describing the specially designed instruction, services, and supports your child will receive. It is written by a team, and you are a required, equal member of that team, alongside a general education teacher, a special education teacher, someone who can interpret assessments, and a district representative who can commit resources.
Three documents do most of the work: the assessment report (what testing found), the IEP itself (the plan), and prior written notice (the district's written explanation when it proposes or refuses something). If you keep organized copies of just these three, you are ahead of most rooms.
2Read the Present Levels first
The Present Levels section (you may see PLOP or PLAAFP) describes where your child is right now. Every other part of the IEP, goals, services, minutes, placement, is supposed to flow from it. If Present Levels are vague or outdated, everything built on them is shaky.
Two checks: Is this describing my child this year, with current data? And does it describe the whole child, strengths included, not just deficits?
3Goals a stranger could measure
A real annual goal has four parts: a baseline (where the student starts), a target (where they're headed), a measure (how progress is counted), and a date. "Will improve reading comprehension" has none of these. "Given a 3rd-grade passage, will answer comprehension questions with 80% accuracy on 4 of 5 trials by March" has all four.
The test: if a brand-new teacher read this goal in October, would they know exactly what to measure and what counts as success? If not, ask the team to tighten it.
4At the table
You can bring anyone you want to an IEP meeting: a friend to take notes, a provider who knows your child, an advocate. Send questions or concerns in writing beforehand so they make the agenda, and ask for draft documents in advance if the team prepares them.
You do not have to sign anything the day of the meeting. Taking the IEP home to read is normal and reasonable. If the district proposes or refuses something important, ask for it in prior written notice, including the options the team considered and rejected.
5After the meeting, and when you disagree
Progress reports on IEP goals must come at least as often as report cards. Read them against the goal's numbers, not the adjectives. If the data shows a goal isn't moving, ask the team to meet; you can request an IEP meeting at any time, not just annually.
If you disagree with an evaluation, you can request an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) at public expense. If you disagree more broadly, options range from an informal team meeting to mediation and due process. Most disagreements resolve well before formal proceedings when the record is clear and the asks are specific. That record is what lessons 1 through 4 built.
Quick check
Three questions, no grades, instant answers.
1. Which section should everything else in the IEP flow from?
Present Levels describe where the child is now. Goals, services, and placement are all supposed to be built on that foundation.
2. A goal says "Sam will improve his behavior." What's missing?
All four are missing. A stranger reading this goal would have no idea what to measure or what success looks like.
3. The team pressures you to sign before you leave. You should:
You're entitled to time to review. Signing attendance is separate from consenting to the plan.
Practice: rate these goals
Real goals look like one of these. Would you sign off?
"Given a 4th-grade passage, Maya will read 110 words per minute with fewer than 4 errors on 3 consecutive weekly probes, by May 30. (Baseline: 72 wpm)"
Strong. Baseline (72 wpm), target (110 wpm, under 4 errors), measure (weekly probes, 3 consecutive), and date (May 30) are all there. A stranger could run this.
"Diego will make better choices during unstructured time as measured by teacher observation."
Needs work. No baseline, no definition of "better choices," no target number, no date. "Teacher observation" with no criteria means nobody can tell if it was met.
This bootcamp is the free version. The full version is Scott next to you at the table.
Scott Rudolph spent nine years teaching special education and four more leading schools and district programs. He knows exactly how these meetings run, because he used to run them. Families work with him to prepare for meetings, strengthen weak goals, challenge evaluations, and resolve disagreements without burning bridges with the school.
The first conversation is free and genuinely useful, whether or not you ever hire him.
What Are HLPs?
The vocabulary your teachers are using, decoded, and where you fit in it.
1The short version
High-Leverage Practices (HLPs) are 22 teaching practices identified by the Council for Exceptional Children and the CEEDAR Center as the moves that matter most for students with disabilities. They earned the name because they're used constantly, they work across grade levels and settings, and they're backed by research.
The list was revised in 2024. The big change: instead of 22 equal items, the practices are now organized into four domains, each anchored by "pillar" practices, the ones everything else hangs on.
2Four domains, six pillars
Collaboration · Pillars: HLP 1 (collaborate with professionals) and HLP 3 (collaborate with families). Nobody supports a student alone.
Data-Driven Planning · Pillar: HLP 6 (use student assessment data to analyze and adjust instruction). Decisions follow data, not hunches.
Instruction in Behavior and Academics · Pillars: HLP 7 (establish a consistent, organized, and responsive learning environment) and HLP 16 (use explicit instruction). This is the daily-practice heart of the framework.
Intensify and Intervene as Needed · Pillar: HLP 20 (provide intensive instruction for academics and behavior). When universal support isn't enough, turn up the intensity deliberately.
3Why this matters for paras
Para-educators deliver an enormous share of the minute-to-minute support students with disabilities actually receive: small-group practice, behavior support, prompting, re-teaching. When you know the framework your teachers are planning from, their instructions stop being mysterious ("give him wait time, then a gesture prompt") and start being moves you can anticipate and extend.
Consistency is the quiet superpower here. A student who gets the same expectations, the same prompting style, and the same feedback language from the teacher and the para learns faster and behaves better than one navigating two different systems.
4Where you fit, domain by domain
Collaboration: what you observe during independent work is data the teacher can't collect alone. Share it, specifically.
Data-driven planning: tally sheets, work samples, and quick notes you take feed the decisions.
Instruction: the two pillars, organized environments and explicit instruction, are exactly what our two micro-courses cover next.
Intensify: when a student needs more, you're often the one delivering the extra reps, so knowing what "more intense" means (smaller chunks, more responses, more feedback) makes those minutes count.
Quick check
Three questions, instant answers.
1. How many High-Leverage Practices are there?
22 practices, organized in the 2024 revision into four domains anchored by pillar practices.
2. The two pillar practices for Instruction in Behavior and Academics are:
HLP 7 and HLP 16 anchor the domain; practices like grouping and technology are embedded practices that support them.
3. A para's observation notes during small-group work are:
Data-driven planning (HLP 6) runs on multiple sources, and paras see things nobody else sees.
Adapted with acknowledgement from Aceves, T. C. & Kennedy, M. J. (Eds.) (2024). High-Leverage Practices for Students with Disabilities, 2nd edition. Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center.
Practice: which domain is this?
Sort each real-world moment into its HLP domain.
You keep a tally of how many math problems Jayden finishes independently each day and hand it to the teacher on Fridays.
Data-Driven Planning (HLP 6). Your tally is assessment data; the teacher uses it to adjust instruction. (It supports collaboration too, but the data is the point.)
You and the teacher agree to use the exact same three-word prompt when students forget the entry routine.
That's HLP 7 in action: a consistent, organized environment where routines are taught and every adult uses the same language.
A student isn't progressing with the regular small group, so you start running shorter, more frequent sessions with more practice turns, per the teacher's plan.
Intensify and Intervene as Needed (HLP 20): smaller chunks, more responses, more feedback, delivered deliberately when universal support isn't enough.
Imagine your whole team running on the same playbook.
These micro-courses are the free sample. The full version is Scott in the room with your staff: live, hands-on training for para-educators and school teams on HLPs, inclusion, explicit instruction, and behavior, delivered by someone with nine years in special education classrooms and four more leading school sites and district programs.
No slide marathons. Practice, coaching, feedback, and materials your team will actually use Monday morning. Sessions scale from a single staff meeting to a year of embedded coaching.
Explicit Instruction
The pillar practice behind almost every lesson plan you'll support. Fifteen minutes, four moves.
1The big idea: I do, we do, you do
Explicit instruction is a gradual release of responsibility: the adult carries the thinking first, then shares it, then hands it over. A classic lesson has five parts: an opening that activates what students already know, modeling, guided practice, independent practice, and a short closing review.
As a para, you'll usually be supporting the middle three, and the most common mistake in each is the same one: doing too much of the student's work for them.
2Model like you mean it
Modeling is a demonstration plus a think-aloud: you do the task while narrating the decisions. "First I read the whole problem. I see the word 'fewer,' so I'm thinking subtraction..." Use consistent, kid-friendly language, the same words every time, and show non-examples too ("watch what happens if I skip this step").
Complex skills get chunked into small, ordered pieces. Don't model a whole essay; model one topic sentence.
3Guided practice: lots of responses, careful help
In guided practice, the student does the work while you prompt and watch. Two things matter most: frequent opportunities to respond, students learn by answering, not by listening to more explanation, and catching errors early, because a student practicing something wrong is learning it wrong.
Prompt from least to most: a pause first, then a gesture, then a hint, then a partial model. Reach for the smallest prompt that works, and let go of it as soon as you can.
4Feedback and fading
Feedback should be immediate and specific, both directions. Affirmative: "Yes, you lined up the decimal points first." Corrective: "Stop there, check the second step, what do we do after reading the problem?" Vague praise ("good job!") tells the student nothing they can reuse.
Fading is the whole point. As accuracy climbs, scaffolds come off: fewer prompts, longer waits, less checking-in. If a student can only do the task with you sitting next to them, the release isn't finished yet, and that's the signal to fade, not to stay.
Quick check
Three questions, instant answers.
1. During modeling, the adult should:
The think-aloud is what makes modeling explicit; students hear the invisible decisions, not just see the visible steps.
2. A student makes the same error twice in guided practice. Best move:
Errors practiced are errors learned. Immediate, specific corrective feedback prevents rehearsing the mistake.
3. A student now gets everything right when you sit beside them. You should:
Success with full support is the cue to fade support, so success transfers to independence.
Practice: build the prompting ladder
A student stalls on a step they've seen before. Tap the prompts in the order you'd try them, least help first.
Adapted with acknowledgement from Aceves, T. C. & Kennedy, M. J. (Eds.) (2024). High-Leverage Practices for Students with Disabilities, 2nd edition. Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center. Lesson structure after Archer & Hughes (2011).
Your paras deliver half the instruction. When were they last trained like it?
This micro-course covers in fifteen minutes what Scott builds into muscle memory in a live session: modeling, prompting, feedback, and fading, practiced with real scenarios from your classrooms, not generic ones. Scott spent nine years teaching special education and four more leading sites and district programs, and he trains para-educators the way he wishes every team he supervised had been trained.
Half-day workshops, staff meeting sessions, or embedded coaching. Free planning call to scope what your team needs.
Behavior Basics
You can't make students behave. You can build conditions where good behavior is the easy choice. Fifteen minutes, four moves.
1Environment first
Most behavior problems are prevented, not corrected. The pillar practice (HLP 7) is a consistent, organized, responsive environment: expectations that are positively stated, five or fewer, explicitly taught, and actually practiced, not just posted.
"Consistent" is the part paras control most. If the teacher's expectation is raise-your-hand and your table's unofficial rule is call-it-out, the student isn't being defiant when they call out with the teacher. They're doing what worked an hour ago.
2Teach the "do instead"
For every behavior you want to see less of, name what the student should do instead, and teach that replacement the way you'd teach any skill: model it, practice it, give feedback on it. "Stop hitting" gives a student nothing to do; "hands and feet to yourself, and if you need space, ask for a break" gives them a move.
Routines work the same way. Entering the room, getting help, transitioning between activities: each is a teachable procedure. Students fluent in routines have fewer gaps for problem behavior to fill.
3Positive specific feedback
The highest-value behavior tool costs nothing: positive specific feedback (HLP 8). The formula is name + expectation + the specific behavior: "Thank you, Sean, for being respectful and working quietly so everyone could learn." Not "good job," which names nothing anyone can repeat.
Aim your feedback at the skill, not the reward, and deliver every bit of it, corrective included, respectfully. You're modeling the exact behavior you're asking for.
4When behavior happens anyway
Stay calm, stay consistent, and prompt the routine or replacement rather than debating the behavior. A quiet "show me hands to yourself, then we'll keep going" beats a public negotiation every time.
Then be the team's eyes: jot when it happened, where, what came right before, and what the student got out of it (escape the task? adult attention? peer reaction?). Those patterns are exactly what the teacher or specialist needs for a functional behavior assessment, and paras usually have the best seat in the house for seeing them.
Quick check
Three questions, instant answers.
1. Classroom expectations should be:
Few, positive, and explicitly taught, and consistent across every adult, or students learn the rules change with the person.
2. Which is positive specific feedback?
Name + expectation + the specific behavior. The student knows exactly what to do again tomorrow.
3. A student keeps ripping up worksheets right when independent work starts. The most useful thing to note is:
When/where/before/after is the pattern data a functional behavior assessment is built from, and it points at what the behavior is doing for the student (here, likely escaping the task).
Practice: build the praise
Name + expectation + specific behavior. Mix and match, and hear how it lands.
Adapted with acknowledgement from Aceves, T. C. & Kennedy, M. J. (Eds.) (2024). High-Leverage Practices for Students with Disabilities, 2nd edition. Council for Exceptional Children & CEEDAR Center.
Fifteen minutes online, or a classroom where this actually happens every day.
Knowing the moves is the easy part; building a site where every adult uses them consistently is the work. That's what Scott does in person: behavior-focused training and coaching for para-educators and school teams, grounded in nine years of special education teaching and four years leading school sites and district programs, including two years building full-inclusion programs from the ground up.
Free freebies stay free. When your team is ready for the real thing, the first planning call costs nothing.