Special Education: Improved Timeliness and Better Use of Enforcement Actions Could Strengthen Education's Monitoring System
Released: 2004-10-12T00:00:00

Letter

Background

IDEA is the primary federal law that addresses the special education and related service needs of children with disabilities, including children with specific learning disabilities, sensory disabilities, such as hearing and visual impairments, and other disabilities, such as emotional disturbance and speech or language impairments. The law requires states to provide eligible children with disabilities a free appropriate public education in “the least restrictive environment,” that is, in an educational setting alongside nondisabled children to the maximum extent appropriate.

School districts are responsible for identifying students who may have a disability and evaluating them in all areas related to the suspected disability. In addition, they must re-evaluate children at least once every 3 years, or sooner if conditions warrant a re-evaluation, or if the child’s parents or teacher requests a re-evaluation. Under IDEA, students receive special education and related services tailored to their needs through an IEP, which is a written statement developed by a team of educational professionals, parents, and interested parties at meetings regarding the child’s educational program.

If the IEP team determines the child needs extended year services, schools are required by regulations governing IDEA to provide such services beyond the normal school year. Further, the act requires that states have in place a comprehensive system of personnel development designed to ensure an adequate supply of special education, regular education, and related services personnel to provide needed services.

IDEA seeks to strengthen the role of parents and ensure they have meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of their children. In particular, IDEA regulations require that parents receive prior notification of IEP meetings and that the meetings be scheduled at a mutually agreed upon time and place. The act affords parents other procedural safeguard protections, such as the opportunity to examine their child’s records and to present complaints relating to the identification, evaluation, educational placement of the child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education. Under IDEA, disputes between families and school districts may be resolved through due process hearings, state complaint procedures, or mediation.

The Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) is responsible for administering IDEA. Education authorizes grants to states, supports research and disseminates best practices, and provides technical assistance to states in implementing the law. Education is also responsible for monitoring states’ compliance with IDEA requirements and ensuring that the law is enforced when noncompliance occurs. Education reviews states’ systems for detecting and correcting noncompliance in the state, including noncompliance at the local level. In the event of noncompliance, Education has the specific authority to employ six sanctions: (1) imposing restrictions or “special conditions” on a state’s IDEA grant award; (2) negotiating a long-term compliance agreement with a state requiring corrective action within 3 years; (3) disapproving a state’s application for funds when the application does not meet IDEA eligibility requirements; (4) obtaining a “cease and desist” order to require a state to discontinue a practice or policy that violates IDEA; (5) withholding IDEA funds in whole or in part depending on the degree of the state’s noncompliance; and (6) referring a noncompliant state to the Department of Justice for appropriate enforcement action.

Education’s system for monitoring state compliance with IDEA has been evolving for more than 5 years. This evolution is, in part, in response to the stronger accountability and enforcement provisions in the 1997 amendments to IDEA that emphasized the importance of improving educational outcomes for disabled children, including improving high school graduation rates, increasing placement in regular education settings, increasing participation in statewide and districtwide assessment programs, and improving the outcomes of services provided to students with emotional and behavioral disorders. In 1998, Education implemented the Continuous Improvement Monitoring Process, which focused its monitoring efforts on states with the greatest risk of noncompliance and placed increased responsibility on states for identifying areas of weakness. In 2003, Education implemented the Continuous Improvement and Focused Monitoring System (CIFMS), which, among other things, added new state performance reporting requirements to its monitoring system. Officials of some special education advocacy groups with whom we spoke, including the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, commented favorably on these changes. However, the National Council on Disability, which had published a 2000 study critical of Education’s enforcement of IDEA, continued to question whether Education has taken effective actions to remedy the problems reported.

To Monitor Compliance with IDEA, Education Uses a Risk-Based System That Relies Upon State-Provided Information

Education uses a risk-based system to focus its monitoring efforts, but some data it uses are weak. Education’s monitoring system relies upon states to collect information about their special education programs, assess their own performances, and report these findings to the department annually. In addition, the department selects a limited number of states for further inspection based on a subset of measures. Because this system relies heavily on state data, the department has taken steps in recent years to ensure that states have adequate data collection systems in place. However, some of the data are not uniformly measured or are difficult for states to collect. Education officials acknowledged that data variability limits the usefulness of the reported information. Some officials in states we visited attributed these variations in data in part to inadequate guidance from Education and expressed a desire for more direction on how to measure and report these data.

States Conduct Their Own Performance Reviews and Submit Annual Reports to Education

To assess their own IDEA compliance, states conduct annual special education performance reviews and report their findings to Education. To conduct these reviews, states have undertaken a variety of activities. In particular, states collect data from local districts, including local graduation rates, student placement rates, and parental involvement information, and analyze these data to identify areas of noncompliance at the local level. Additionally, states obtain input from the public about local special education programs through hearings and surveys. States also review dispute resolution processes, including state complaint systems, to determine the type of problems generating complaints and ensure that complaints are being resolved in a timely fashion. In recent years, Education has required states to include groups of stakeholders in the review process, such as parents, advocates, teachers, and administrators from the special education community. State and local officials work with these stakeholders to identify areas in which they may be out of compliance and create detailed improvement plans to remedy these problems. Several state officials we interviewed said the inclusion of stakeholders has been an improvement in the self-evaluation process. For example, officials in Texas told us that working with stakeholders has helped them better understand the severity of particular problems and subsequently has helped position the state to respond to these problems more efficiently. Upon completing the review process, states are required to create detailed improvement plans to address identified deficiencies, which are submitted to Education annually along with the results of their self-reviews through a uniform reporting format. Education implemented this uniform reporting format in recent years to streamline its review process, thereby improving the department’s ability to identify data gaps.

Education Reviews State- Reported Data to Identify Those States Most Likely to Need More Oversight and Assistance

Education reviews state-reported data to assess states’ improvement efforts and identify those states most in need of further monitoring and assistance. In recent years, the department has required states to report on those requirements it considers most closely associated with student results, a narrower array of issues than the department previously monitored. These data are focused on performance in five general categories: (1) the provision of educational services in the least restrictive environment, (2) state supervision of IDEA programs, (3) facilitation of parental involvement, (4) student transitions from early childhood programs, and (5) student transitions into post-secondary programs. Education has required states to supply a variety of data for each of these categories. For example, under the state supervision category, states report information regarding the resolution of formal complaints, due process safeguards for students and parents, special education personnel requirements, as well as other supervision data. Officials in 4 of the 5 states we visited said that Education’s narrowed focus has improved the monitoring process by concentrating attention on those areas most likely to affect results for children.

Education evaluates the collected data for each state in several ways, including assessing how the measures have changed over time and comparing data for special education students to those for general education students. Education has identified areas of IDEA noncompliance through these screens. For example, based on its data review Education can determine if states have been resolving complaints within IDEA-established guidelines or whether waiting lists have been preventing students from receiving IDEA-guaranteed services.

Additionally, according to Education, the department uses selected measures, such as state-reported data on graduation rates, dropout rates and rates of placement in various educational environments to determine which states warrant further monitoring and intervention activities, including onsite visits. States that rank low relative to other states on these measures may be selected. In conducting site visits, Education reviews state records, makes visits to selected districts for on-site examination of student records, and assesses state special education systems, such as complaint systems and student assessment programs. Following these visits, Education issues a report of findings and, when noncompliance is found, requires states to produce a corrective action plan. Education policy tells states to implement a remedy and provide evidence of its effectiveness within 1 year of Education approving the state corrective action plan. As shown in figure 1, Education carried out monitoring visits in 31 different states between 1997 and 2002, visiting between 2 and 8 states per year.

While Education Has Taken Steps to Improve States’ Data Reporting Systems, Some State Performance Measures Are Weak

Because Education has relied heavily on state-reported data, it suspended its usual monitoring visits in 2003 in order to conduct visits to verify the reliability of state systems for collecting and reporting special education data. After reviewing selected data from all states, Education selected 24 states for onsite examination of their data collection procedures and protocols. Following the data verification visits, the department provided states with technical assistance to address any identified deficiencies. According to Education documents, most of the visited states had data collection systems in place, several of which were of high quality; however, some states needed to better monitor the accuracy of their data and train their data entry personnel. Education officials said that selected states will receive monitoring visits in the fall of 2004.

While Education has facilitated improvements in state data collection systems, some of the data are weak. Education has allowed states flexibility in measuring and reporting some performance measures used for site visit selection, such as graduation rates and dropout rates; consequently these data have not been calculated in a uniform manner across states. For example, special education students in Arkansas may receive a standard diploma even if they have not met regular graduation requirements, while special education students in Delaware must meet regular graduation requirements to graduate with a standard diploma. State education officials we talked with said that comparisons of these rates might not be valid because of the wide disparity in how graduation rates are measured and, therefore, should not be used by Education to make judgments about the relative performance of states.

Other types of information that Education has used to evaluate state’s performance, such as student transitions and parental involvement, are weak because they have been difficult to gather or because states have been unclear about how to measure them. States have used a variety of methods to report these data; consequently, Education has not compared states’ performance in these areas. Officials in all 5 states we visited noted that student transitions data were particularly difficult to collect because several different agencies were involved in the process and it was often difficult to track students once they left school. Officials in 4 of the 5 states we visited also expressed confusion about how to report parental involvement. For example, officials in one state were unclear about whether they should report the percent of parents notified of meetings or the percent of parents who attended meetings, while officials from another state believed that the measures they used to report parent involvement did not adequately describe parent involvement.

Officials in 2 of the 5 states we visited attributed their difficulty in collecting and reporting these measures in part to inadequate guidance from Education, and officials in 3 of the 5 states we visited expressed a desire for greater guidance from the department on how to collect and measure these areas. In our review of Education guidance, we found the direction provided to states in terms of what to measure and report to Education in these areas was vague, as Education does not specify how states should demonstrate performance. For example, Education provides states with 17 potential sources for indicators to measure student transitions into postsecondary programs but does not specify which of these indicators should be reported to Education in annual reports.

Education officials with whom we spoke acknowledged difficulties with student transition and parent involvement data and said that they are taking steps to improve data quality. To help address data deficiencies, Education has funded the National Center for Special Education Accountability Monitoring, which assists states, local agencies, and the department in the development of data collection systems. In working with state special education directors, special education advocates, Education officials, and others, the center has found that reliable data sources often do not exist for several of the data elements collected by Education.

Noncompliance Education Found Was about Equally Split between Failures Involving Services to Students and Procedural Deficiencies

Our analysis of Education monitoring reports for states visited between 1997 and 2002 showed that failures directly affecting services to children were about as common as failures involving violations of procedural requirements. Education identified a total of 253 noncompliance findings in 30 of the 31 states visited during this period, with an average of approximately 8 findings per state. Our analysis showed that 52 percent of the findings involved state failures to directly ensure that students were receiving required special education services. As shown in table 1, the most common finding of service noncompliance was failure to adequately provide related services intended to assist learning, such as counseling, speech pathology, and assistive technology. Another common deficiency Education cited was failure to adequately outline the activities and training planned to prepare a student for life after exiting school. Of the 12 states that were cited for not having adequate special education or related services personnel, some acknowledged that a personnel shortage had prevented them from always making timely evaluations, which could have resulted in delayed services, late placement decisions, and limited provision of extra help that would be needed to teach special education students in regular education settings.

The remaining 48 percent of Education’s findings were for compliance failures that we classified as procedural in nature, that is, activities that did not directly provide or immediately facilitate a service to students. According to our analysis, Education’s most common finding of procedural noncompliance with IDEA was failure to invite some of the appropriate parties to student transition meetings where parents, school personnel, department representatives, and the students themselves determined what educational and vocational training they would need before they left school. Other procedural failures, shown in table 2, often involved the completeness of paperwork or timeliness of meeting other IDEA requirements. For instance, the department found that in several states, notices sent to parents regarding upcoming IEP meetings related to student transition did not include required information such as the purpose of the meeting and the list of who was invited. Similarly, some states did not produce written complaint decisions in a timely manner that outlined how complaints were resolved.

Education Has Sought to Bring States into Compliance by Providing Technical Assistance and Requiring Corrective Action Plans, but Resolution Has Been Prolonged

When Education has identified noncompliance, it typically has offered technical assistance to states and required them to create corrective action plans; however, states have generally not resolved the noncompliance in a timely manner. Most cases of noncompliance have remained open for several years before closure, and some cases dating back as far as 1997 have not yet been completely resolved. Education’s process for correcting deficiencies consisted of several phases, each of which took a considerable amount of time to complete. For example, on average, 1 year elapsed from Education’s monitoring visit to issuance of its report findings. The department has also made limited use of sanctions to address longstanding issues with noncompliance, but in these cases, too, resolution has been protracted. Further, we found that the 1-year compliance deadlines specified by Education were often missed. State officials commented, and Education officials confirmed, that this standard 1-year timeframe for correction may not, in some cases, provide an adequate period of time in which to implement a remedy and demonstrate its effectiveness. To address noncompliance situations that are expected to take more than 1 year to correct, 3-year compliance agreements may allow states to plan their remedial steps over a longer period.

To Effect Compliance, Education Typically Provided Technical Assistance and Required State Correction Plans, but Most Cases of Noncompliance Remained Open for Years without Resolution

To resolve the deficiencies identified in 30 of the 31 states visited from 1997-2002, Education offered technical assistance to states and required them to develop corrective action plans and submit them to the department for approval. The department assisted states in achieving compliance through informal guidance and, in some cases, follow-up visits to confirm states’ actions. Education officials answered questions regarding policies and best practices as well as referred states to regional resource centers and other technical assistance providers if needed. Also, Education required states to create corrective action plans and submit them to the department for review and approval. The plans were expected to include strategies to remedy deficiencies and demonstrate the effectiveness of the remedy within a year of the approval date of the plan. For example, Maryland was cited for failure to ensure that students with disabilities were educated in regular education settings to the maximum extent possible. To address this violation, one of the steps in the state’s correction plan was to create professional development activities and training materials that emphasized inclusiveness and making appropriate placement determinations. During the 1-year period of correction, states were required to submit periodic updates to document evidence of improvement for Education’s review.

Although corrective action plans have a 1-year timeframe for completion according to Education policy, our analysis showed that most cases of noncompliance addressed through this method remained open for years. We found that only 7 of 30 states with findings of noncompliance visited from 1997 to 2002 had completely resolved their deficiencies as of May 2004. Closure of these cases, that is resolution of all deficiencies, took from 2 to 7 years from the time the deficiencies were first identified during a monitoring visit. Of the remaining 23 cases, about half have been unresolved for 5-7 years. Education officials told us that for almost all of these outstanding cases, states have made progress toward correcting the noncompliance, and 11 states are close to completion. Table 3 lists the dates of Education’s monitoring visits, reports, and case closures for the 31 states monitored in the time period 1997 to 2002.

In analyzing the time taken to correct noncompliance, we found that the correction process consisted of two phases, each of which frequently took a year or more to complete, as shown in figure 2. The first phase, Education’s issuance of a findings report following its monitoring visit, took a year on average, with a range of 4 to 21 months. Officials in the 3 states we visited that were monitored since 1997 expressed concern about the timeliness of Education’s monitoring reports. Officials from 2 of these states said that the reports contained out-dated information that did not reflect the current environment in the state. In addition, state officials in 1 state said that they delayed the development of their corrective action plans until they received Education’s findings report. Education officials told us that staffing constraints and multiple levels of report review contributed to the delays in issuing reports, but they did not provide a goal of reducing the time needed to issue reports. Second, the time from report issuance to approval of the corrective action plan generally took an additional 1 to 2 years. During this time period, states produced an initial corrective action plan that they revised, if needed, based on review and feedback from Education. Education officials acknowledged that this approval process can be lengthy, but have indicated they are working to reduce the period for corrective action plan approval to 6 months.

Enforcement Actions Have Been Taken Infrequently; Resolutions Were Protracted

Although most instances of noncompliance were addressed without more severe actions taken, occasionally Education took measures beyond technical assistance and corrective action plans by imposing sanctions on states. During the 10-year period from 1994 to 2003, Education used three types of sanctions–withholding of funds, special conditions, and compliance agreements. Withholding of all grant funds was attempted once by Education, but the state successfully challenged Education’s action in court and receipt of the grant was not interrupted. The most commonly used sanction was special conditions put on states’ annual grants stipulating that the problem must be resolved within 1 year. During the 1-year period of correction, the states continued to receive funds. In cases of noncompliance requiring longer-time periods to correct, an additional tool available to Education was a compliance agreement, which allowed a state 3 years in which to correct the noncompliance while also continuing to receive funds. Compliance agreements were used only for the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. Education officials told us that compliance agreements were used infrequently because they are voluntary and states must agree to the arrangement. States that entered into compliance agreements were also required to undergo a public hearing process to demonstrate that they could not completely address their violations within 1 year.

In total, Education has taken enforcement action against 33 states for noncompliance from 1994 to 2003. An action was taken against multiple states for failing to publicly report on the performance of children with disabilities on alternate assessments, as required by the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA. As a result of other compliance issues, Education has imposed 15 sanctions against 11 states in this 10-year period. Appendix II contains more details on enforcement actions taken by Education from 1994 to 2003.

Education considers a number of factors in deciding to impose a sanction, including the duration, extent, and severity of the noncompliance, as well as whether a state has made a good faith effort to correct the problem. We found that sanctions were imposed for a variety of specific deficiencies— commonly for failing to provide related services, place students in the least restrictive environment, or have an adequate state system in place for detecting and correcting noncompliance at the local level. In New Jersey, special conditions were imposed to address long-standing noncompliance involving state oversight of local special education programs. New Jersey officials told us that the enforcement action caught the attention of senior state officials and helped the special education department obtain the resources needed to correct the problem within 2 years of the imposition of the sanction. When considering the type of sanctions to impose, Education officials told us that their primary consideration is the expected time of resolution. In cases where officials believe the problem can be addressed in 1 year, special conditions may be used. In cases where resolution is expected to take longer, 3-year compliance agreements may be pursued.

In cases involving sanctions, the resolution of compliance issues was often prolonged – generally ranging from 5 to 10 years from the time of problem identification to the imposition of the sanction to closure, as shown in figure 3. In most instances, 4 to 9 years elapsed before Education imposed sanctions, and an additional 1 to 3 years generally passed following the sanction before noncompliance was closed. For example, Massachusetts received special conditions on its grant award in 2000 for noncompliance that was first identified in 1991. Once the special conditions were imposed, Massachusetts remedied the noncompliance in 1 year. Education officials indicated that the reason why several years often elapsed before sanctions were used was that Education preferred to work with states instead of imposing sanctions if they demonstrated good faith efforts to correct deficiencies and followed the steps outlined in their corrective action plans.

In addition to those cases that were closed, some ongoing cases have been even more protracted. Although states that receive special conditions attached to their grants are expected to correct problems before the next grant year, in many cases problems were not fully resolved and continued for years. In these cases, states received multiple special conditions for some of the same issues of noncompliance. For example, Pennsylvania received a special condition on its grant for 3 consecutive years beginning in 1998 before achieving compliance on all issues. At the beginning of the 1999 grant year, Pennsylvania had resolved two of the five original issues of noncompliance. Additionally, enforcement actions for California, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands dating from 1997 and 1998 have not yet been completely resolved.

Compliance Deadlines Often Missed; State Officials Indicated—and Federal Officials Acknowledged— Difficulties of Meeting Timeframes

States we reviewed often did not meet the 1-year compliance deadline prescribed by Education, and state officials said that some types of noncompliance could not be corrected within 1 year, a problem that Education officials also acknowledged. Our examination of Education’s records for a sample of 9 states with corrective action plans revealed that none had completely corrected their noncompliance within 1 year of approval of the plan, as required by Education. Likewise, states receiving special conditions on their grant usually did not completely resolve the noncompliance issue within 1 year, and some took numerous years to make the correction. For example, California received special conditions attached to its grant award in 2000 for various deficiencies. The state did not complete the correction of this deficiency within 1 year and as a result received an additional special conditions letter in 2001.

Regarding the 1-year deadline, Education officials told us that some states may not be able to correct deficiencies and demonstrate the effectiveness of the changes within the year required of them. In addition, they said that in many cases, a state may take corrective steps within one year but that demonstrating the effectiveness of the remedy may extend beyond 1 year. Officials in 3 states we visited also raised concerns that some types of noncompliance could not be corrected within 1 year. For example, Kansas officials said the state could not demonstrate compliance with a requirement to change an IEP component because IEPs are written year- round and thus every IEP could not be changed within the 1-year deadline. Also, Education officials we interviewed emphasized that some deficiencies take longer to correct than others. They commented that states often could correct certain procedural deficiencies within a year, but entrenched problems, such as personnel shortages, generally take more than 1 year to remedy.

In cases of noncompliance that require longer periods of time to correct, Education may pursue 3-year compliance agreements with states that allow the states to continue to receive funds while they are correcting noncompliance. This sanction requires states to establish interim goals and engage in longer-term planning, with specific compliance benchmarks and timelines. States that enter into compliance agreements must demonstrate at a public hearing they cannot achieve compliance within 1 year and that a 3-year time frame for correction is more appropriate. However, this option has been rarely used. One state we visited objected to a compliance agreement Education proposed. The department did not pursue the compliance agreement and, instead, imposed special conditions on the state’s grant approval each year for several years. Officials from this state said that they chose not to enter into a compliance agreement because they considered the additional reporting requirements and monitoring activities it would entail to be too burdensome.

Conclusions

Education has taken steps in the right direction since 1997 in focusing its review of state support for children with disabilities on those factors that most affect educational outcomes for disabled students, such as increased parental involvement and placement in regular education settings. In recent years, Education has invested considerable effort to assist states in improving data reliability. Furthermore, by reviewing this information through the use of a uniform reporting format, Education is in a better position to make its local site visits yield improvements where they are most needed. Despite these efforts, some of the information states report about their special education programs are weak and not comparable, which limits Education’s ability to select states for on-site visits that have the most pressing problems. Education made 31 site visits between 1997 and 2002, visiting no more than 8 states in any 1 year. Given such finite opportunities for inspection, it may be easy to miss areas where children are not receiving educational and related services.

Aside from targeting the right states for visits, the lengthy resolution process has been a problem in OSEP’s monitoring system. In many instances, noncompliance with the requirements of IDEA has persisted for many years before correction. One reason for the delay is that Education has allowed considerable time to elapse in the initial phases of the correction process; specifically, the time from the first identification of a problem to the imposition of the 1-year time frame for correction. This considerable delay—sometimes taking up to 21 months between problem identification and the issuance of department findings—could result in states postponing the implementation of corrective plans. Although the initial phases of the correction process can be lengthy, Education’s 1-year deadline for states to correct deficiencies is, at times, too short for states to achieve compliance. Unrealistic timeframes may both discourage states from focusing on achievable, albeit longer-term, plans for correction. These unrealistic timeframes may also lessen the impact of the enforcement action itself, as in the case where special conditions are imposed for infractions year after year with few consequences to the state, but potentially detrimental consequences to students with disabilities. The imposition of appropriate deadlines, including the more frequent use of compliance agreements that allow for better long-term planning and predictable consequences when these deadlines are not met, could motivate states to achieve compliance more quickly.

The combined effect of such prolonged reviews—lengthy timeframes for the receipt of reports and the approval of corrective action plans—and failure to hold states more firmly to a rapid resolution could directly affect the progress of some of the nation’s most vulnerable children. Without some deliberate and specific improvements to its monitoring process, Education may face difficulties in helping the nation’s disabled students realize their full potential.

Recommendations for Executive Action

We recommend that the Secretary of Education develop and provide states with additional guidance for collecting and reporting three measures that Education considers key to positive outcomes for students with disabilities: early childhood transitions, post-secondary transitions, and parental involvement; expedite the resolution of noncompliance by improving response times throughout the monitoring process, particularly in reporting noncompliance findings to states, and track changes in response times under the new monitoring process; impose firm and realistic deadlines for states to remedy findings of noncompliance; and when correction of noncompliance is expected to take more than 1 year, make greater use of Education’s authority to initiate compliance agreement proceedings rather than imposing special conditions on grants.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to the Department of Education for review and comment. Education’s written comments are reproduced in appendix III. Recommended technical changes have been incorporated in the text of the report as appropriate. The department discussed, but did not explicitly agree or disagree with two recommendations, disagreed with one recommendation, and did not directly respond to one recommendation, the recommendation regarding imposing firm and realistic deadlines.

In response to our recommendation that Education provide states with additional guidance for collecting and reporting data on student transitions and parental involvement, the department was not explicit about its intended actions. While Education agreed with the need to provide states assistance in these areas, it did not clearly indicate whether it would develop the guidance we recommended. Education said that it is funding several centers that are assisting states in collecting data in these areas. We commend Education’s efforts to improve special education performance data. However, to maximize the usefulness of these efforts, the department should formalize the results of these activities in guidance. Therefore, we continue to recommend that Education develop and provide states with guidance on collecting and reporting student transitions and parental involvement data.

Regarding our recommendation to improve the department’s response times throughout the monitoring process, Education acknowledged past problems with timeliness but indicated that it had made improvements in recent years. Education stressed that the reports we reviewed were based on its previous monitoring processes, rather than the current process, the Continuous Improvement and Focused Monitoring System (CIFMS). The department said that timeliness had improved in several areas. For instance, Education said that the time required to issue its data verification monitoring reports has been about 4 months and that this is a substantial improvement over the previous system. Education also said that the CIFMS is resulting in the timely receipt of and response to state improvement plans and that the department has a goal to issue responses to all plans by September 30, 2004. However, we could not determine whether, overall, Education’s new CIFMS monitoring process will result in improved timeliness. Education officials told us that the data verification visits primarily focused on accuracy of state data, not detecting noncompliance. Therefore, timeliness associated with these visits may not be an indication of overall improvement. In addition, the timeliness of the focused monitoring visits has not been established since they have not yet begun. We believe that Education’s response times should be improved, but we could not determine the extent to which changes already made might impact timeliness. Therefore, we modified our recommendation to suggest that Education track timeframes associated with various steps in the new monitoring process to substantiate possible improvements.

In response to our recommendation that Education make greater use of its authority to initiate compliance agreement proceedings when appropriate, the department said that it cannot independently initiate these proceedings because the compliance agreement process is voluntary on the part of the states. We do not agree with this position. The relevant statute specifically authorizes the department to hold a hearing and directs it to invite certain parties, including the state. While the department cannot compel a state to enter into a compliance agreement, we think initiating proceedings to consider the merits of entering into such an agreement could likely result in beneficial corrective action discussions between the department and the state. It could also result in greater reliance on the 3-year compliance agreement or at least improve corrective action planning by the state. While Education may impose other remedies such as partial or full withholding of funding, issuing a cease and desist order, or referring a state’s noncompliance to the Department of Justice, we believe that in many instances of noncompliance, the 3-year compliance agreement could be the least onerous, and perhaps most helpful, tool to improve state compliance with IDEA.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce its contents earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days after the date of this report. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the Secretary of Education and the House and Senate Committees with oversight responsibility for the department. We will also make copies available to other parties upon request. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on GAO's Website at http//:www.gao.gov.

Please contact me on (202) 512-7215 if you or your staff have any questions about this report. Major contributors to this report are listed in appendix IV.

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

As requested, our review focused on the Department of Education’s monitoring of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Part B, those aspects of the law that regulate the provision of services to disabled school-aged and preschool children. In conducting our review, we examined Education’s monitoring procedures and guidance since Congress last amended IDEA legislation in 1997. Additionally, we examined reports submitted to Education to document compliance, including self-assessments, Section 618 data reports, and improvement plans. We also reviewed compliance and enforcement documentation and Education monitoring reports for the 31 states visited for Part B monitoring since 1997 (see below for more information). Because Education infrequently used sanctions, we examined the previous 10-year period to capture a more comprehensive picture of enforcement actions. Additionally, we conducted site visits to 5 states, where we interviewed state officials and special education experts. We also interviewed Education officials; representatives from the National Council for Disability, an independent federal agency that makes recommendations to the President and Congress on disability-related issues; and representatives from national education organizations.

We conducted our work between September 2003 and August 2004 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Site Visits

We conducted site visits to five states – California, Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, and Texas. States were selected for variation in the number of special education students served, geographic location, the date of their last monitoring visit, whether they had received a data verification visit, and whether they had been placed under sanctions by Education for IDEA violations since 1993. Additionally, in selecting states, we considered how states ranked on various Education risk factors, including student placement rates, graduation rates, drop-out rates, and level of state complaints. We conducted our site visits between December 2003 and March 2004.

While in each state, we analyzed state monitoring documents and met with officials at states’ Departments of Education, including the State Directors of Special Education and members of their staff responsible for monitoring efforts. We interviewed these officials about their experiences with Education’s monitoring processes and gathered information about the systems used by their states to monitor local compliance with IDEA. Additionally, in each state we spoke with members of the state stakeholder committees, which help state officials conduct their self- assessments and create improvement plans. Stakeholders we spoke with included parents of special education students, special education and school administrators, and special education advocates.

Monitoring Report Analysis

To determine the nature of noncompliance in those states selected by Education for review, we analyzed the reports issued by Education for the 31 Part B monitoring visits Education made between 1997 and 2002. A 2002 cut-off date was selected because at the time of our analysis, Education had not yet issued a monitoring report for the one state it visited in 2003. To analyze these reports, we reviewed the noncompliance findings cited in these reports and divided the findings into two categories; those relating to infractions that were service-related and those relating to infractions that were procedural in nature.

For our analysis, we defined a service compliance issue as an activity that directly provides the student with a basic service required by IDEA or is an activity that will immediately facilitate the provision of a basic service required by IDEA. A procedural compliance issue was defined as an activity that meets a process-oriented requirement of IDEA. While the implementation of these process-oriented requirements might improve the special education program immediately or over time, the activity or process does not directly provide or immediately facilitate a basic service to a student.

Analysis of Compliance Documentation

To determine the results of Education’s efforts to remedy noncompliance, we reviewed Education documents and data pertaining to the 30 states visited between 1997 and 2002 that were cited for noncompliance in Education monitoring reports. Specifically, we analyzed the 30 monitoring reports; and available Education documents such as corrective action plans submitted by states in response to report findings; notification documents from Education approving state plans; state-submitted evidence of change in noncompliance; and, when applicable, notifications to states when noncompliance had been sufficiently addressed. To determine the length of time it took to resolve cases of noncompliance through monitoring visits and technical assistance, we analyzed these documents for dates and deadlines. We computed the length of time for resolution from the date of the monitoring visit until the date Education documented resolution of the problem.

Analysis of Enforcement Documentation

To obtain information about Education’s enforcement efforts, we reviewed all cases of enforcement action taken against states by Education from 1994 to 2003. For our review, we viewed enforcement actions as beginning at the time a sanction was first imposed, regardless of how many subsequent times a sanction was used to ultimately bring about compliance. That is, if a state received multiple sanctions for the same infraction, such as several special conditions letters in consecutive years, we viewed all of these individual enforcement actions as one action. Likewise, if a state received one 3-year compliance agreement, while another state received three consecutive special conditions letters for the same infractions, we treated both instances as one enforcement case.

For all enforcement cases, we analyzed available Education documents, such as notifications of sanctions, including state grant award letters subject to special conditions and compliance agreements; state-submitted evidence of change to demonstrate compliance; and Education’s correspondence to states notifying them when noncompliance had been sufficiently addressed, thus closing the enforcement cases. Additionally, we examined past monitoring reports to determine when Education first identified noncompliance that ultimately resulted in an enforcement action. In those instances when noncompliance was not identified through a monitoring visit, we used the date of the enforcement action as the date that the noncompliance was first identified for the purposes of our analysis. In all cases, we analyzed documentation for dates and deadlines to determine the length of time it took to resolve cases of noncompliance through sanctions.

Appendix II: IDEA-Related Sanctions: 1994- 2003

Fiscal management.

Not yet resolved; year has not yet expired.

Not yet resolved.

Timely resolution of complaints.

Resolved in 2000.

General supervision; identification and correction of deficiencies, IEP violations, provision of related services and least restrictive environment.

Resolved in 2002.

Ensuring ability to request due process hearings.

Resolved in 2003.

Eleven areas of noncompliance, including general supervision; due process hearings; timeliness of evaluations and placements; and provision of free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.

Not yet resolved. Three findings remain open in July 2003: timely implementation of hearing decisions, placement in the least restrictive environment, and timely evaluations.

Fiscal management.

Not yet resolved; year has not yet expired.

Ensuring IEP components are determined at an IEP meeting with all required participants; placement of students in least restrictive environment.

Resolved in 2001.

General supervision; identification and correction of deficiencies.

Resolved in 2001.

Fiscal management.

Not yet resolved; year has not yet expired.

General supervision; identification of deficiencies; placement of students in least restrictive environment, provision of extended school year and speech services.

Resolved in 2001.

Outstanding issues from 1993 compliance agreement regarding timely evaluations and provision of services.

Resolved in 1998.

Fiscal management.

Not yet resolved.

Provision of services to students with disabilities who were expelled or suspended long-term.

1994–Attempt to withhold funds; action contingent on outcome of court case. 1995–Attempt to withhold funds; action contingent on outcome of ongoing court case. 1996–Attempt to withhold funds; action contingent on outcome of ongoing court case.

Education was ultimately unsuccessful in court and funds were not withheld. However, subsequent changes in IDEA rendered the disputed issue moot, as all states were required by statute to provide services to disciplined students.

Fiscal and program management; general supervision; qualified personnel; placement of students in least restrictive environment; provision of transportation services.

Not yet resolved.

Participation and reporting on alternate assessments.

2002–Special conditions imposed against 27 states. 2003–Special conditions imposed against 11 unresolved states, plus 1 additional state, Ky.

Sixteen of 27 states resolved in 2003; 11 remaining states + Ky. not yet resolved.

Alaska, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Colo., Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Del., D.C., Guam, Ky., Maine, Mich., P.R., and Utah.

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Education

Appendix IV: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contacts

Staff Acknowledgments

The following people also made important contributions to this report: Ellen Soltow, Summer Pachman, Behn Kelly, Susan Bernstein, and Walter Vance.

Related GAO Products

Special Education: Additional Assistance and Better Coordination Needed among Education Offices to Help States Meet the NCLBA Teacher Requirements. GAO-04-659. Washington, D.C.: July 15, 2004.

Special Education: Clearer Guidance Would Enhance Implementation of Federal Disciplinary Provisions. GAO-03-550. Washington, D.C.: May 20, 2003.

Special Education: Numbers of Formal Disputes Are Generally Low and States Using Mediation and Other Strategies to Resolve Conflicts. GAO-03-897. Washington, D.C.: September 9, 2003.

School Dropouts: Education Could Play a Stronger Role in Identifying and Disseminating Promising Prevention Strategies. GAO-02-240. Washington, D.C.: February 1, 2002.

Student Discipline: Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. GAO-01-210. Washington, D.C.: January 25, 2001.