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Special Education Law
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Updates

A running log of changes.

Version 2.2.1

Federal appeal alerts and a new Guide page

  • Federal appeal alerts now appear at the top of each decision page. Yellow Caution means the decision relies on authority later overturned; red Warning means the decision itself was reversed or modified on appeal; blue On appeal means a notice of appeal has been filed.
  • Plain-language summaries are now available for decisions and rulings. Switch on the Summaries toggle in the results toolbar to read a quick overview of a case in the search results and at the top of its decision page.
  • Issue Areas is now available as a search filter, making it easier to narrow results by topics like stay-put, compensatory education, evaluations, placement, discipline, and discovery.
  • New Guide page covers searching syntax, the administrative-versus-federal-appeals scope toggle, the appeal alerts, and a label-by-label tour of a result card.
Version 2.2

Accessibility, sign-in, and TOC

  • New accessibility statement page, plus better keyboard, focus, and screen-reader support across dialogs, drawers, and icons throughout the site.
  • Sign in with a one-time email link, no Google account required.
  • Decision pages now have a side-rail table of contents that follows along as you scroll, with citations index and reading progress.
  • Highlight any passage in a decision to copy it as a ready-to-paste quote with the citation, or save it directly into a folder note.
  • Hover over a footnote reference to preview the footnote inline, without losing your place. Clicking still jumps to the footnote.
  • Export your saved decisions to an Excel workbook from the dashboard. One sheet per folder, with all your notes and citations included.
Version 2.1

Smarter search

  • Search finds BSEA case numbers even when full-text search misses them (fallback lookup).
  • Handles space-separated case numbers (e.g., "25 12345") and "BSEA Nos." variants.
  • ASCII and Unicode fractions are interchangeable in search.
  • Secondary BSEA case numbers in consolidated cases are now searchable.
Version 2.0

Complete rebuild

  • Citation tracking: decisions link to the BSEA decisions they cite.
  • Smarter search engine: phrase search with quotes, OR operator, exclusion with minus, proximity search.
  • Filters: hearing officer, school district, outcome (parent, district, mixed), document type.
  • User accounts with saved decisions and folders.
Version 1.7

Algolia integration

  • Partnered with Algolia to power search with significant speed and relevance improvements.
Version 1.6

Speed improvement

  • Major search performance upgrade.
Version 1.5

New search engine

  • Swapped the underlying search engine for better matching.
Version 1.0

Launch

  • Special Education Law goes live as a free, searchable database of Massachusetts BSEA decisions.