IDEA Part B authorizes federal grants to states to help them meet the excess costs of providing special education and related services to students with disabilities. There are a number of conditions that states must meet to be eligible for funding. In particular, states must agree to make available a free appropriate public education to all students with disabilities beginning at the age of 3 and possibly lasting to the 22nd birthday depending on state law or practice, in the least restrictive environment—meaning, to the maximum extent appropriate, these children are educated with other children who do not have disabilities. To accomplish this, states and LEAs must first identify, locate, and evaluate students who are eligible for special education services, regardless of the severity of their disability. For those deemed eligible, the state and LEA must ensure that each student has an individualized education program (IEP) describing their present levels of academic achievement and functional performance; measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals; special education and related services; supplementary aids and services; and other supports to enable the child to advance appropriately toward attaining those goals. The IEP is developed by a team of teachers, parents, school district representatives, and other educational professionals. This team must meet to develop the initial IEP within 30 days of determining that a student needs special education and related services, and must review the IEP periodically, but not less than annually, to determine whether the annual goals have been achieved, and revise the IEP, as appropriate. To qualify for IDEA funding, states must also provide certain procedural safeguards to children and their parents. For example, these safeguards require that parents be provided with prior written notice a reasonable time before the LEA proposes or refuses to initiate or change the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education to the child. IDEA also affords parents the right to request a due process hearing, as well as the right to bring a civil action in a state or federal district court. States must ensure that any state rules, regulations, and policies related to IDEA conform to the purposes of IDEA, and are required to identify in writing to Education and their LEAs any state-imposed requirement that is not required by IDEA. The 2004 reauthorization of IDEA included several provisions that were intended to help reduce administrative tasks and paperwork associated with documenting compliance with the law. Specifically, the law: Created two pilot programs: the Paperwork Waiver Demonstration Program (Paperwork Waiver Program), and the Multi-Year IEP Demonstration Program (Multi-Year IEP Program). Under the Paperwork Waiver Program, Education could waive statutory or regulatory requirements that states must comply with in order to receive funding under Part B for up to 4 years, for up to 15 states. The Multi-Year IEP Program authorized Education to allow up to 15 states to give parents and LEAs the option of developing a comprehensive IEP covering up to 3 years, rather than developing yearly IEPs, as currently required. Required that Education publish and disseminate model forms, including forms for documenting IEPs, providing prior written notice, and providing procedural safeguards notice. Introduced various administrative changes, including raising the amount of federal grant funds that states may set aside for administration and other state-level activities, and permitting states to use these funds for paperwork reduction, among other things; eliminating the requirement for benchmarks and short-term objectives in IEPs, and requiring that states identify in writing to LEAs and Education any state requirements that are not mandated by IDEA, and that they minimize requirements that LEAs and schools are subject to under IDEA. IDEA requires states to have a mechanism for interagency coordination between the state educational agency (SEA) and any other state agencies that provide or pay for any services that are considered special education or related services. For example, since 1988, costs of some related services provided to low-income children under IDEA may be covered by Medicaid. In 1999, GAO reported that Medicaid documentation requirements are more burdensome than those of IDEA, leading states to cite this as an area of concern in coordinating Medicaid and IDEA services. Following the 2004 reauthorization, there has been little public debate on the issue of paperwork and administrative burdens associated with IDEA. In 2012, GAO reported information about the burden on states and school districts associated with federal education regulations and identified three IDEA requirements as being among the more burdensome: reporting IDEA performance indicators, IEP processing, and transitioning students into school-age programs from infant and toddler programs. We also found that officials of states and school districts reported they generally did not collect information about the costs to comply with federal requirements, noting that states and school districts are not required to report compliance costs, the data are not useful to them, and collecting such data would in itself be burdensome. We recommended Education take additional steps to address duplicative reporting and data collection efforts across major programs. In addition, we recommended Education identify unnecessarily burdensome statutory requirements and develop legislative proposals to address these burdens, acknowledging that the agency’s ability to address burdens associated with some provisions of IDEA might be limited without statutory changes. Education agreed that it should take additional steps to address duplicative reporting and data collection efforts that are not statutorily required, and believed additional efficiencies could be achieved in its data collections. However, Education noted that some data elements are required under various program statutes and said it would work with Congress in the next reauthorization of IDEA to address duplication or the appearance of duplication resulting from those requirements. Additionally, GAO has performed extensive work on the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), including the law’s effectiveness and approaches to reducing burden on the public. Under PRA, federal agencies are generally required to submit any proposed information collections to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval, including an estimate of the burden the information collections impose on the public. This submission certifies that the information collections meet the PRA standards that, among others, include taking steps to ensure the collection: avoids duplication, minimizes burden on the public. is necessary for agency performance, and In response to PRA requirements, Education submits estimates of time needed to collect and report some IDEA related information, including state applications for IDEA funding, the State Performance Plan/Annual Performance Report, and SEA and LEA recordkeeping requirements. In our past work, we have noted potential discrepancies between Education’s estimates and reported burden as estimated by institutions of higher learning, making it difficult to know the actual burden imposed by these data collections. Education took several steps to design and implement two pilot programs, the Paperwork Waiver Program and Multi-Year IEP Program. To promote these pilot programs, Education conducted a national outreach tour to discuss the changes in the 2004 IDEA reauthorization and provide information about the pilot programs. In December 2005, Education also published notices of proposed requirements and selection criteria for both programs, and requested public comments by March 6, 2006. Education published the final requirements and selection criteria in July 2007, and made applications available to states in October 2007. Additionally, Education officials noted they held a teleconference for the state directors of special education describing the process for applying to participate in the pilot programs, which was also publicized through email and supported by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc. (NASDSE). Despite Education’s efforts, no state applied to participate in either of the pilot programs. NASDSE officials told us that the application requirements were much too resource-intensive for the potential value they would bring, and implementation of either pilot program would most likely require additional staff that federal funding would not cover. Several states wrote letters to Education explaining their reasons for not applying for and implementing the Paperwork Waiver Program in particular, noting that the program would require more paperwork and staff, but provide little in the way of additional federal funds. For example, New York’s letter listed as key reasons for not participating the extensive requirements for participation, limited funding for the pilots, and the staff commitment necessary for both development of the proposals and ongoing oversight of the pilot projects. In a similar letter, Rhode Island noted that implementing the Paperwork Waiver Program would likely result in more paperwork—not less—as well as taking more time from staff. Likewise, Wisconsin and Missouri expressed concerns about the number of requirements and constraints, coupled with inadequate funding. Education officials said that the amount of funding that was offered to help states implement the Paperwork Waiver Program, $25,000 per state, was based on the amount of available funding at the time, and had taken into account the need to establish a sound evaluation design, as well as Education’s commitment to providing technical assistance, as needed. States also might have been reluctant to participate in the Paperwork Waiver Program because Education cannot waive certain provisions states find most burdensome. For example, Education officials said that states and LEAs were most interested in Education waiving the requirements to notify parents of procedural safeguards and to provide parents prior written notice of certain actions taken with regard to their child’s education, both of which are procedural safeguards that Education is prohibited from waiving under IDEA. Furthermore, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) told us that none of their members were in favor of the paperwork waivers, in part because of the perceived risk of exposing local districts to potential litigation if they were to eliminate any of the requirements that parents have come to expect. Stakeholders cited similar reasons for not participating in the Multi-Year IEP Program. Representatives from NASDSE and the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) cited the costs associated with applying for the program absent sufficient additional federal funding.