A decision on a submitted complaint must be reached within 60 days, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The Department of Public Instruction usually meets or just misses the 60-day requirement. A Continuum of Dispute Resolution Processes To broaden the range of options for resolving special education disputes, the Center recommends a more fully developed continuum of opportunities for settling differences of opinion short of litigation. One promising means of resolving disputes is mediation . Information collected by the Minnesota Department of Education found that 96 percent of mediation participants in special education disputes would use mediation again and would recommend it to others.
Federal law requires the state to maintain a list of qualified and trained mediators.
More than 50 mediators have been trained by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction and the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In April 1998, the Department of Public Instruction notified local school districts that these mediators are available. However, thus far no information has been collected on the use of the new mediation process or its effectiveness. Some state departments of education aggressively advocate the use of informal dispute resolution such as mediation. These include Michigan and Illinois, which has trained mediators on staff.