Recovery services can include compensatory education services (comp ed). However, comp ed is different from recovery services. Comp ed has been around a long time. Recovery services are new.
School districts are required by law to provide a free appropriate public education (“FAPE”) to students enrolled or eligible to be enrolled in special education. A school district provides FAPE when it provides an individualized education program (IEP) that enables the student to make academic progress tailored to the student’s unique needs.
Historically, if a school district fails to provide a student FAPE, comp ed services may be offered by the school district, or ordered by the state schools superintendent (OSPI) or an administrative law judge, in order to place the student in the position they would have been in if the school district had provided FAPE.
When schools closed and limited in-person schooling due to the pandemic, many students did not get IEP services. While schools struggled at first to figure out remote learning, they were still responsible for FAPE. By summer and fall of 2020, schools were expected to have systems in place to assure FAPE for students with disabilities. Students who did not get IEP services during the pandemic can ask for comp ed to make up (compensate) for these lost services.