Methodology and data sources

How providers are verified

Every licensed provider page starts from the IDFPR public license file (data.illinois.gov dataset pzzh-kp68). We keep only active licenses in pediatric-relevant professions and match each one to the national NPI registry, first by the state license number recorded in NPPES and otherwise by name within the same profession and city. Today PedsList lists 128,583 active providers; 67,007 are matched to an NPI.

"Pediatric" is a claim we have to earn. State registries don't record whether a clinician treats children, so a provider is marked pediatric only with a real signal: an Illinois Early Intervention credential, a pediatric specialty code in NPPES, a pediatric clinic roster, or the provider's own attestation. The absence of the badge does not mean a provider doesn't see children.

Disciplinary records are reproduced word for word from IDFPR, every action, most recent first, with no severity score. Some actions are administrative. Names are matched to licenses by license number, not guessed.

How the school and district scorecards are built

• Inclusion (Least Restrictive Environment): the share of a district's or school's students with IEPs in general education 80% or more of the day, plus the other three federal placement tiers. Source: ISBE Illinois Report Card 2024–25.
• Academic outcomes (reading and math proficiency, chronic absenteeism, graduation, dropout) for the "Children with Disabilities" group. Source: ISBE Report Card 2024–25. The "typical Illinois district" comparison is the unweighted mean across districts.
• Discipline, restraint and seclusion are unduplicated student counts from the federal CRDC 2023–24, as self-reported by districts. Rates are per 1,000 (restraint, seclusion, police referrals) or per 100 (suspension) students served under IDEA. Physical restraint and seclusion are never added together, because one student can appear in both.
• Disparity ratio: a district's suspension (or expulsion) rate for students with disabilities divided by its rate for students without disabilities.
• Median and percentiles are computed across districts. Rankings and percentiles only include districts with at least 30 students with IEPs (schools: 20), because small numbers swing wildly. Smaller districts are still shown, labeled "too few to rank".
• Colors (green or orange) compare a figure with the Illinois average. They describe the number, not the quality of a school.

How restraint and seclusion are counted

Restraint and seclusion come from the federal Civil Rights Data Collection, which every school district completes every two years; PedsList uses the 2023–24 collection, the most recent release. The figures are unduplicated counts of students served under IDEA: a student restrained ten times counts once. Physical restraint and seclusion are never added together, because one student can appear in both. Since 2023–24, a school that answers "no" to having restrained or secluded any student skips the counts, which we record as zero. Rates are per 1,000 students with IEPs.

Statewide totals. Across all Illinois education agencies, 2023–24 reports 2,907 students with disabilities physically restrained and 1,176 secluded (10.9 and 4.4 per 1,000), tallied by PedsList from OCR's public-use file. The 826 regular school districts on our scorecards account for 2,322 restrained and 1,020 secluded students; the "state average" shown on district scorecards is the rate across those districts (8.9 and 3.9 per 1,000). The rest are in 84 agencies that aren't regular school districts, mostly special-education cooperatives and joint agreements (see restraint and seclusion). For 2017–18, our parse matched OCR's published Illinois tables exactly (2,432 restrained, 1,742 secluded).

Unusual reports. A district whose reported rate exceeds 150 per 1,000 students with IEPs is shown with a ⚠ flag. We publish what the district reported, but a rate that far above every other district may reflect how incidents were counted (for example, recording every time-out as seclusion).

We skipped the 2021–22 collection: about 80% of Illinois school records were coded "not applicable" for restraint and seclusion that pandemic year, which makes it unusable.

How the due-process decisions were classified

We collected every decision posted on ISBE's due-process portal (316 decisions, FY 2008–2026), extracted the text of each PDF, and used an AI model to draft a one-line summary and classify the prevailing party, the issues and the disability category against a fixed list. Decisions whose text could not be read reliably (mostly older scanned PDFs) are labeled "Not classified" and excluded from percentages rather than guessed. ISBE removes district and student names, so these statistics are statewide only.

How the therapy explainers are written

Each explainer is researched from professional-association guidance (for example AOTA, ASHA and the AAP), systematic reviews and Illinois agency sources, and lists those sources on the page. We describe what families report and what research shows separately, flag approaches that major professional bodies dispute, and don't recommend for or against any therapy, except to flag safety concerns or methods whose basic validity is disputed. Talk with your child's care team.

Affiliations, placement and money

PedsList earns money from optional paid listing features for providers and from practice software. Paid ("Sponsored") placement is always labeled. One clinic, Noor Pediatric Therapy, is affiliated with PedsList and is marked "Vetted Partner" with that affiliation disclosed on its card and page; it is shown first on the clinics page for the cities it serves and receives no other ranking boost. School and district data are never for sale and are not affected by any relationship.

Reusing our data

The school, district and due-process data PedsList compiles is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; please credit "PedsList (pedslist.com)" and the original agency. Downloads: district inclusion (CSV), district suspension (CSV).