If your kid has an IEP, a 504 plan, dyslexia, ADHD, or any other learning difference, "can I even do this myself" is a heavier question than it is for other parents. It deserves a straight answer, not a reassuring one.
What actually happens to the IEP
In Texas, a homeschool is legally treated as a private school. That has a real consequence: your child's public-school IEP does not transfer with you, and no homeschooled child has an individual legal right to the same services they'd get enrolled in public school. That's not Kitchen Table School's opinion — it's how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Texas Education Agency guidance actually define it.
What you do keep access to: Child Find still applies to homeschoolers, meaning your local school district (ISD) still has an obligation to identify kids who may need services, and districts are required to develop a service plan — not an IEP, a different and more limited document — for eligible private-school and homeschool kids who want it, funded through what's called "proportionate share." A service plan can include things like speech therapy or specific accommodations, decided district by district, and it's genuinely worth pursuing. It is just not the same guarantee as an IEP.
The honest first step, before anything else: call your local ISD's special education department directly and ask what their service plan process looks like for homeschooled students. It varies by district, and a five-minute phone call tells you more than any blog post can.
Why one-on-one pacing genuinely helps
Here's the part that isn't legal fine print — it's just how kids with learning differences actually learn. A lot of what makes a classroom hard for a kid with dyslexia, ADHD, or a processing difference isn't the material. It's the pace: the class moves on whether or not it clicked, and there's rarely time to circle back until it does. One-on-one instruction removes that specific bottleneck. You (or a one-on-one teacher) can slow down on the one thing that's stuck, try it three different ways, and not move forward until it actually lands — every single day, for every subject, without 24 other kids waiting.
The classroom wasn't failing your kid because the material was wrong. It was failing them because nobody could stop and wait long enough.
Where Mrs. M helps, and where she doesn't
Mrs. M, our one-on-one AI teacher, is built around exactly that kind of patience: she works at your child's actual pace, reads the curriculum you already own and teaches from its real pages, and never has to move on to the next kid before this one is ready. For a lot of families, that alone changes what a hard subject feels like.
What she is not: a therapist, a diagnostician, or a replacement for occupational therapy, speech therapy, or a formal evaluation. If your child needs those, pursue them directly — through your ISD's service plan process, a private provider, or both — alongside the day-to-day teaching, not instead of it. We'll never tell you an AI teacher fixes what a trained specialist is for.
See exactly where your child stands, then teach at their real pace
Kitchen Table School's free placement assessment shows you, in plain language, where your child is in each core subject right now. Then Mrs. M does the daily teaching at whatever pace your child actually needs — she'll even read the curriculum you already own and teach straight from its pages, with receipts for every session.
Start with the free assessment