In 1975, a new federal law, now called IDEA, established a federal commitment to identify children with disabilities and provide special education and related services such as speech and language services, psychological services, physical and occupational therapy, and transportation. The cornerstone principle of IDEA is the right of children with disabilities to have a free appropriate public education. Under the law, school districts must provide special education and related services without charge to parents and the services must meet the standards of the SEA. The services for and placement of each child must be based on the child’s unique needs, not on his/her disability. IDEA also stipulates that children with disabilities are to be educated in the “least restrictive environment,” that is, the law requires that children with disabilities are educated with children who are nondisabled to the maximum extent appropriate. About 13 percent of students in federally supported programs, or about 6.5 million children, receive special education services under IDEA. These students have a wide variety of needs that range from mild to severe. Children with speech or language impairments, specific learning disabilities, emotional disturbance, hearing impairments (including deafness), visual impairments (including blindness), orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or mental retardation, and who need special education and related services are eligible under IDEA. School districts are responsible for identifying students who may have a disability and evaluating them in all areas related to the suspected disability. The evaluation process is intended to provide information needed to determine if the student is eligible as defined under IDEA. The IEP team decides on, among other things, special education and related services that will be provided for the child and on the frequency, location, and duration of the services to be provided. The law requires two steps for an IEP: (1) a meeting by the IEP team to agree about an educational program for a child with a disability and (2) preparing a written record of the decisions reached at the meeting. Development of the IEP is designed to facilitate communication between parents and school personnel and provide an opportunity for resolving any differences concerning the special education needs of a child. The IEP also documents a commitment of resources for providing special education and related services, and schools are responsible for ensuring that the child’s IEP is carried out as it was written. Disagreements over eligibility determinations about a child and over an IEP can be contentious and occasionally result in disputes. Many disagreements between families and local schools are resolved informally, during initial or follow-up IEP meetings at the local schools, or in other venues such as conferences with principals or other administrators. On occasion, however, parties have been unable to resolve their differences. In these instances, under IDEA, procedural safeguards afford parents recourse when they disagree with school district decisions about their children. Disagreements can be formally resolved through state complaint procedures, through a due process hearing, or through mediation. A state complaint is initiated through a signed written complaint that includes a statement that a public agency has violated a requirement of IDEA and the facts on which the statement is based. If the complaint is against a school district, the SEA typically informs the school district of the complaint by formal notification, requests documentation from the local education officials, and, when necessary, conducts an on-site investigation. The SEA must issue a written decision to the complainant that addresses each allegation in the complaint and contains findings of fact and conclusions, and the reason for the SEA’s final decision. If violations are found, the decision specifies the corrective actions to achieve compliance. A due process hearing is an administrative agency process initiated by a written request by one of the aggrieved parties to either the SEA or the LEA, depending on the state’s process. An impartial hearing officer listens to witnesses, examines evidence, and issues a written decision. In the decision, the hearing officer determines whether violations occurred and issues remedies. Mediation is a voluntary process whereby parents and school districts agree to meet with an impartial third party in an informal setting to reach a resolution that is mutually agreeable. Agreements are mutually designed, agreed to, and implemented by the parties. While the processes used for resolving disputes vary, other important key differences exist among these three mechanisms as well. Table 1 identifies some of the key differences in formal dispute resolution mechanisms offered by SEAs. Parents and other parties can generally choose which mechanism to use to resolve their dispute. Parents have the right to request a due process hearing at any time over any issue related to the identification, evaluation, or educational placement or the provision of a free appropriate public education to the student. They may also file both due process requests and written state complaints simultaneously, but the SEA must set aside any part of the state complaint that is addressed in the due process hearing until the conclusion of the hearing. Any issue in the complaint not addressed in the due process hearing must be resolved within the time frames and procedures consistent with the state complaint requirements. Finally, although either parents or school districts can file a request for a due process hearing, this mechanism is potentially very costly to both parties, in terms of financial expenses and relationships. While school districts and parents are responsible for their own attorney’s fees and other associated expenses, the hearing officer is paid for by the state. According to the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE), due process systems are structured similarly across the states with one major distinction—about two-thirds of the states use a one-tier system in which the hearing is held only at the state level. About one-third of the states use a two-tier system in which a hearing occurs at a local level, usually the school or district with the right to appeal to a state- level hearing officer or panel. Even though the 1997 amendments to IDEA required states to make mediation available as a voluntary alternative to parents or school districts when they request a due process hearing, most states had mediation systems in place much earlier. In September 1994, NASDSE reported that Connecticut and Massachusetts were the first states (in 1975) to implement formal mediation systems. By 1985, 15 more states had implemented mediation, and over the next decade 22 additional states had mediation systems. Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) is responsible for overall administration and allocation of federal funds for states’ implementation of IDEA programs. In addition, OSEP is charged with assessing the impact and effectiveness of state and local efforts to provide a free appropriate public education to children and youth with disabilities. OSEP has contracted for two major research studies that focus, in part, on dispute resolution activities. One of these, conducted by Abt Associates, the Study of State and Local Implementation and Impact of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (SLIIDEA) will include nationwide data over a 5-year period (2000-04); a report on selected findings was published in January 2003. The second study, SEEP, is being conducted by the American Institutes for Research. In May 2003, this project reported on procedural safeguards and related expenditures for dispute resolution from survey data of a nationwide sample of LEAs. Since states are not required to collect or report data on dispute resolution activity, these studies, along with two studies by NASDSE, provide the most recently available information on the prevalence of formal dispute activity. However, each of these studies has limitations, which are discussed in appendix I. Under IDEA, Education also provides funds to grantees for parent centers. The parent training and information centers and community parent resource centers provide a variety of services, including helping families obtain appropriate education and services for their children with disabilities, training and information for parents and professionals, connecting children with disabilities to community resources that can address their needs, and resolving problems between families and schools or other agencies. Each state has at least 1 parent center and, currently, there are 105 parent centers in the United States. According to the Technical Assistance Alliance for Parent Centers, the national coordinating office, parent centers provided assistance to nearly 1 million parents and professionals during the 2001-02 school year. Formal disputes between schools and families in the 4 states we visited ranged from identifying a student’s disabilities to developing and implementing the IEP and the student’s placement. Officials in these states told us that disputes frequently arose between families and school districts over (1) identifications, that is, whether children were eligible for IDEA services and how their eligibility determinations were made; (2) the types of special education and related services, if any, they needed; (3) whether schools carried out the education programs as written; and (4) whether schools could provide an appropriate educational environment for certain students. SEA and LEA officials told us that schools and parents occasionally disagreed about whether or not a child needed special education services. On the one hand, a school may want to evaluate a child because it believes he or she may have a disability and, in this case, the school must evaluate the child at no cost to the family. A parent may also ask for the child to be evaluated, but if the school does not think the child has a disability it may refuse to evaluate him or her. Parents who disagree must take appropriate steps to challenge the school’s decision. Conversely, for a variety of reasons, parents may not want the child to receive special education services. For example, the family may disagree with the school’s decision about whether or not the child has a disability, or the parent may be concerned about the possibility of negative perceptions about special education identification. Officials in five of the eight school districts we visited mentioned that disputes occurred because parents wanted or did not want their children identified for special education. Another issue that existed in some school districts was over the availability of related services, such as speech and language services and occupational therapy. Disputes sometimes occurred as a result of problems in providing related services, including the types, amounts, methods, or the failure to provide services.