IDEA is the primary federal law addressing the unique educational needs of children with disabilities. Millions of youths with disabilities aged 3 through 21 receive educational services under IDEA each year. In 1975, the Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), which mandated that a free, appropriate public education be made available for all children with disabilities, ensured due process rights, required individualized education programs, and required placement of children with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. Subsequent amendments to this law added other provisions and programs in support of children with disabilities and their parents and renamed the law as the IDEA in 1990. IDEA was most recently substantially revised in 1997. IDEA defines childhood disabilities to include a number of different emotional or physical conditions. Specifically, IDEA defines a “child with a disability” as a child with mental retardation; hearing, speech, or language impairments; visual impairments; orthopedic impairments; serious emotional disturbance; autism; traumatic brain injury; other health impairments; or specific learning disabilities, who, for this reason, needs special education and related services. By requiring that eligible children with disabilities receive special education services to address their educational needs in the least restrictive environment, IDEA mandates that such students are to be educated, to the maximum extent appropriate, with children who are not disabled. Generally, disabled students are to be removed from the regular education class only when they cannot be educated in that setting with supplementary aids and services. IDEA provides safeguards to ensure that children with disabilities who engage in misconduct are not unfairly deprived of educational services. For example, in developing the child’s IEP, the team—which includes at least one of the child’s regular education teachers and others providing special education resources—must consider strategies to address any behavior that may impede the child’s learning or the learning of others. If a child with a disability engages in misconduct, the school may take disciplinary action; however, the school may also be required to convene the IEP team to conduct a behavioral assessment and develop or review an intervention plan to address the behavior that resulted in the disciplinary action. Also, when the suspension considered is for more than 10 school days at a time, the IEP team must review the relationship between the child’s disability and the behavior that resulted in the disciplinary action. In October 1997, the Department of Education issued proposed regulations implementing the amendments. The proposed regulations contained several provisions that would allow services to continue to special education students who were suspended or expelled. In response to these proposed regulations some districts put in place discipline policies that were consistent with the proposed regulations that limited suspensions of special education students. In commenting on the proposed regulations, some school administrators and others voiced concerns that several procedural and discipline provisions that were designed to protect the rights of students with disabilities created problems among some school administrators and teachers over how to preserve school safety and order. After receiving nearly 6,000 public comments, Education issued final regulations for the IDEA amendments on March 12, 1999. The final regulations included some changes to the discipline provisions that attempted to respond to some of these concerns. According to Education, the discipline provisions in the final regulations give school officials reasonable flexibility to deal with minor infractions of school rules, while ensuring that special education students continue to receive educational services. To avoid disruption during the school year, Education did not require a state to comply with the new regulations essentially until the 1999-2000 school year began. Generally, under IDEA and the 1999 implementing federal regulations, schools are permitted to suspend a special education student for up to 10 school days in a given school year without providing educational services or removing the child to an alternative educational setting. However, if the misconduct is not a manifestation of the student’s disability, the student may be suspended beyond 10 school days; for such suspensions, the special education student must be provided educational services. The final regulations require a manifestation determination—to assess whether the student’s misconduct was caused by his disability—and an IEP team meeting only when a suspension is for more than 10 school days at a time. Otherwise, for short-term suspensions lasting 10 or fewer school days that do not constitute a change in placement, a manifestation determination and an IEP meeting are not mandatory. Additionally, the final regulations also permit repeated short-term (not more than 10 school days) suspensions of a disabled student, even if the suspensions cumulatively total more than 10 school days, so long as educational services are provided to the student after the 10th suspension day in a given school year. The regulations also modify a school’s authority to suspend a disabled student for more than 10 school days. Specifically, prior to the 1997 IDEA amendments, a student with a disability could be removed for up to 45 days to an interim alternative educational setting for carrying a firearm; under the revised law and the implementing regulations, this suspension authority has been expanded to include a disabled student who possesses or carries a weapon or possesses, uses, sells, or solicits drugs at school, as well as a disabled student determined by a hearing officer to be so dangerous that the student’s behavior “is substantially likely to result in injury to the child or others.” Before special education students may be removed from their current educational placement, however, IDEA provides a number of procedural safeguards. One such safeguard is a student’s right to remain in his or her current educational placement during any due process and subsequent judicial proceedings that follow the initial disciplinary removal. This safeguard was designed to limit the exclusion of students with disabilities from their educational setting because of their disability. In the past, such exclusions were alleged to have occurred so that schools, under the guise of minimizing disruptions or protecting other students, would not have to provide expensive services to disabled students. However, the so-called “stay-put” provision, whereby a child’s educational placement is to be maintained, has been perceived by some as limiting the authority of school personnel to remove special education students from school for disciplinary infractions. Education publicized the issuance of these final regulations extensively through printed materials and via its agency Web site. It also provided training and support materials to states and school districts explaining the changes. Education held a series of public forums around the country for local education agencies, schools, and other interested parties to explain the changes to the final regulations, with a special emphasis on the changes to the discipline provisions. It also held interactive videoconferences for the public and made numerous presentations at state forums. Education funded partnership grants with various groups to provide approved training and information at the local level. Finally, the agency issued memorandums related to IDEA implementation in electronic and printed form to provide guidance and answers to commonly asked questions. About 81 percent of schools responding to our survey experienced one or more incidents of serious misconduct in the 1999-2000 school year. Most principals reported to us (consistent with prior research findings) that most incidents of serious misconduct were acts of violent behavior, generally fistfights; firearms incidents were rare. Although the number of incidents was greater among regular education students, special education students had a higher rate of serious misconduct (per 1,000 students) than regular education students in reporting schools. The most common effect of serious misconduct was a disruption of student learning. Other effects, as reported by principals, included administrators and teachers having to spend an undue amount of time responding to the misconduct. Principals attributed the effects of serious misconduct to incidents caused by both regular education students and special education students. On the basis of our analysis of the data reported to us, 81 percent of the 272 responding schools experienced at least one incident of serious misconduct in the 1999-2000 school year (see table 1). Schools responding to our survey experienced an average of 10 incidents of serious misconduct among regular education students and 4 incidents among special education students in school year 1999-2000 (see table 2). To make a comparison that controls for the greater number of regular education students in schools (they were 88 percent of all students in the schools we surveyed), we calculated rates of misconduct per 1,000 students. We found that special education students had a higher rate of misconduct. For every 1,000 regular education students represented in our survey, there were 15 incidents of serious misconduct reported; for every 1,000 special education students, there were 50 incidents of serious misconduct reported. Violent behavior was the most common type of serious misconduct engaged in by students, according to responding principals. Based on information we received from written survey comments, from discussions we had with school officials during our survey data clarification, and from our site visits, many of the violent incidents were student fistfights. Seven of every 10 incidents among regular education students and 3 of every 4 incidents among special education students were acts of violent behavior. The number of incidents reported by principals varied. While 22 percent of responding principals reported no serious misconduct among regular education students during the 1999-2000 school year, 31 percent reported 10 or more incidents among regular education students. Further, 34 percent reported no serious misconduct among special education students, while 15 percent reported 10 or more incidents among this group. More detailed information on the incidence of serious misconduct appears in tables 6 and 7 in appendix II. Serious misconduct, whether committed by regular education or special education students, leads to a variety of negative effects on the school community (see fig. 1). The most common effect—reported by 52 percent of responding principals—is a disruption in student learning. The next most common effect of serious misconduct involves the time and attention teachers and administrators must devote to dealing with student misconduct. Forty-seven percent of responding principals indicated school administrators have to spend an undue amount of time and attention on serious misconduct, and 29 percent of responding principals indicated that teachers have to spend an undue amount of time on discipline procedures and reviewing district discipline policies. These responses are consistent with the comments we heard in our site visits.