How Long Does Your State Give a School to Evaluate Your Child?

The federal floor is 60 calendar days after consent, but several states set their own number, and it isn't always shorter. Here's how to check yours.

Federal law gives a school district 60 calendar days after a parent consents to evaluate a child for special education. 34 CFR §300.301(c)(1) states the evaluation "must be conducted within 60 days of receiving parental consent for the evaluation." That number is a federal floor, not a fixed national rule — and if your state has replaced it with a number of its own, that state number is the one that actually controls, not the 60 you'll see quoted most often.

The two built-in exceptions

§300.301(d) allows the clock to stop in exactly two situations: a parent "repeatedly fails or refuses to produce the child" for testing, or the child enrolls in a different public agency's school mid-evaluation and the new agency and the parent agree on a specific completion date instead. Those are federal exceptions to the federal number — a separate question from whether your state uses a different number to begin with, which is what the rest of this guide covers. (For what happens once a deadline — federal or state — actually passes, see our guide on missed evaluation deadlines.)

Some states shorten it

Michigan's own rule is half the federal figure. Mich. Admin. Code R 340.1721b(1)(a) states: "The time from receipt of parental consent for an evaluation to the notice of an offer of a free appropriate public education or the determination of ineligibility must not be more than 30 school days." School days, not calendar days — so a consent signed right before winter break runs longer in real time than the number alone suggests.

Texas runs a similar but not identical model. Under 19 Tex. Admin. Code §89.1011(d)(1), the written evaluation report is due "not later than the 45th school day following the date on which the school district receives written consent for the evaluation," and that window stretches automatically "if a student has been absent from school during that period on three or more school days" — the deadline extends by the same number of days the student missed. Texas then runs a second clock on top of the first: the same timeline document gives the district's ARD committee an additional 30 calendar days after the evaluation report is finished to decide eligibility and, if appropriate, the IEP and placement.

Some states make it longer

It's tempting to assume a state can only shorten the federal number, never extend it. New Jersey is the clearest counterexample. N.J.A.C. 6A:14-3.4(e) states that after consent, "the evaluation, determination of eligibility for services under this chapter, and, if eligible, development and implementation of the student's IEP shall be completed within 90 calendar days" — half again as long as the federal 60. New Jersey's 90 days also has to stretch across the full sequence written into that one sentence: the evaluation itself, the eligibility call, and, if the child qualifies, a written and implemented IEP.

The same consent date, two different deadlines

Say a parent signs the consent form on October 1, 2026.

Rule	Days	Deadline
Federal floor (34 CFR §300.301(c)(1))	60 calendar days	November 30, 2026
New Jersey (N.J.A.C. 6A:14-3.4(e))	90 calendar days	December 30, 2026

A parent going by the federal number alone would expect an answer by the end of November. In New Jersey, the district is still squarely inside its own deadline a full month later — and hasn't done anything wrong. The reverse can just as easily catch a parent off guard in a state like Michigan: 30 school days is normally well short of 60 calendar days, so waiting for day 60 before treating an evaluation as overdue can mean waiting past the date Michigan's own rule already set.

Most states don't set their own number at all

Not every state has taken up its own timeline. Where a state's regulation simply points back to the federal rule instead of setting its own day count, the federal 60 days is the only number that applies there — there's no separate state figure to look up. IEPClock's own evaluation deadline calculator and letter generator is built from state-by-state research into exactly this question, covering every state that has adopted its own timeline; where a state isn't listed in the tool, that's the finding, not a gap — it means that state's regulation defers to the federal 60 days rather than setting a separate one.

Federal law is the floor — check yours before you count on 60

The takeaway isn't "60 days" or any other single number. It's that the evaluation clock in your state depends on what your state has actually written into its own regulations, and the only way to know is to check — not to assume "shorter than federal" or "same as federal." IEPClock's evaluation deadline tool asks for your state and, where a computable state rule exists, runs the math for you against that state's own citation; where it doesn't (a school-day count, or a state running two deadlines at once), it tells you that plainly instead of guessing. Either way, it also drafts a dated letter you can send once you know which deadline actually applies.

Nothing you type into the calculator is stored or transmitted anywhere — it runs entirely in your browser. This is informational only, not legal advice, and IEPClock is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education or any state education agency — the citations above go straight to each state's own published regulation so you can read the source yourself.

Sources

Try the IEP Evaluation Deadline Calculator & Letter Generator →

Informational only, not legal advice. Every federal citation here is quoted or paraphrased from the regulation itself, linked inline — but IDEA procedures are frequently supplemented by state and district rules this guide doesn’t cover. Confirm anything time-sensitive against your own state’s special-education regulations.

Last reviewed: September 2026 · Against primary sources cited in the body.