The 50 states and the District of Columbia spent an estimated $50 billion on special education for children from birth through age 21 in school year 1999-00. About 12 percent of this amount came from federal funds, specifically IDEA grants (10 percent) and Medicaid funds (2 percent). (See fig. 1.) In addition to federal funds, other sources are used to support the provision of special education and related services for children with disabilities, such as state general and special education funds, local funds, and private insurance. Under IDEA, three grants can fund services to children under age 6. School-age Grants provide money to states to help them serve all eligible children, ranging in age from 3 through 21. Preschool Grants provide money to states to help serve 3 through 5-year-olds with disabilities and require states to have policies and procedures that assure a free appropriate public education for all 3 through 5-year-olds with disabilities as a condition for receiving other IDEA funds for this age range. Infant Grants provide money to states to serve children under age 3 who have developmental delays or a condition that will probably result in a developmental delay, or at a state’s discretion, who are otherwise at risk of developmental delays. Unlike the other two grants, Infant Grants provide services to both children and their families, primarily in settings that are not school-based. (See table 1.) Program overlap occurs when programs have the same goals, the same activities or strategies to achieve them, or the same targeted recipients. As noted in a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee report, “A certain amount of redundancy is understandable and can be beneficial if it occurs by design as part of a management strategy to foster competition, provide better service delivery to customer groups, or provide emergency backup.” Because both School-age and Preschool grants can be used to serve the same target recipients, children with disabilities ages 3 through 5, they can be characterized as overlapping. However, this overlap does not necessarily lead to duplication of services, which involves providing identical services to identical target groups. Education allocates funds from School-age, Preschool, and Infant Grants to all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, based on federal formulas. At the state level, School-age and Preschool Grants are administered by the state educational agency (SEA), and Infant Grants are administered by a designated lead agency, most frequently the state’s department of health or human services. A fixed portion of School-age and Preschool grants may be retained for state-level activities and program administration, although the majority of funds from these grants are passed through SEAs to local educational agencies (LEAs), generally school districts, according to a federally mandated formula. Infant Grants may be distributed to local public and private agencies by designated state lead agencies using state-developed criteria. Education’s OSEP monitors activities funded by these grants and the extent to which states comply with IDEA in a process known as continuous improvement monitoring. Several states are selected each year for in-depth monitoring, including on-site data collection, based on various factors, such as when they were last monitored, information from grant applications, and information on each state’s status in achieving improved results and compliance. School-age and Preschool Grants share the same goal, performance objectives, and performance measures; fund the same range of services; and have similar eligibility requirements except for the age-range served, while Infant Grants differ from these grants in almost all respects. (See table 2.) School-age and Preschool Grants share the common goal of improving results for children with disabilities by assisting state and local educational agencies to provide children with disabilities access to high- quality education that will help them meet challenging standards and prepare them for employment and independent living. The two programs use the same set of performance objectives and performance measures. For example, one objective of both is that preschool children with disabilities receive services that prepare them to enter school ready to learn. As a performance measure for this objective, both programs use an increase in the percentage of preschool children receiving special education services who have readiness skills when they reach kindergarten. These programs also pay for the same range of special education and related services, such as physical and occupational therapy and technology to assist the disabled, such as voice-activated software. Special education and related services are generally provided at school. To be eligible for these services, children must be classified by the state as having a disability and as a result of the disability need special education and related services. The key distinction between the two grants is that School-age grants serve children ages 3 through 21, whereas Preschool Grants serve only children ages 3 through 5. The goal, performance objectives, performance measures, eligibility criteria, and types of services allowed for Infant Grants differ from those for School-age and Preschool Grants. This grant is designed to assist states in developing and implementing a statewide, comprehensive system to provide early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities (and at a state’s discretion those who are at risk of experiencing developmental delays) and their families. The goal of Infant Grants is to enhance children’s functional development and increase families’ capacity to increase their children’s development using a comprehensive system of early intervention services, including health services, such as tube feeding or intermittent catheterization, and family training. Objectives are broad and each has performance measures. For example, an increase in the percentage of all children under age 3 receiving age-appropriate services in nonschool settings is a performance measure for the objective of providing services at home or in daycare, when appropriate. To be eligible for services under Infant Grants, children must be under age 3 and have a developmental delay or the potential to develop one. Because of the age-specific developmental needs of infants and toddlers, health and family services provided under Infant Grants are more comprehensive than under the other two grants. These services are provided primarily in nonschool settings, generally in the home or at a day- care site. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico receive grants from each of the three programs, which they distribute to various local public and private agencies. Whether a local agency receives funds from any one grant depends on whether it is serving the relevant age group. For example, the Roanoke Interagency Coordinating Council in Virginia, which serves children from birth through age 2, receives Infant Grants but not School-age and Preschool Grants. However, many LEAs receive more than one grant. For example, the Mapleton Local School District in Ohio received School-age and Preschool Grants in School Year 2001-2002, while the South Washington County School District in Minnesota received funds from all three programs. Many states use more than one grant to fund the same range of services for 3 through 5 year-olds. Officials in 18 of the states we contacted told us they may use School-age Grants to serve 3 through 5 year-olds—the same group of children served by Preschool Grants. Only one of the states we contacted, Alaska, does not permit School-age Grants to be used to pay for services for preschoolers. Also, in a survey of SEAs conducted by the National Early Childhood Technical Assistance System, 37 SEAs reported that they use funds from School-age Grants to support the provision of special education and related services for preschool children with disabilities. Since they are not required to track such information, none of the 19 states we contacted were able to tell us the percentage of School- age Grant funds they used to provide services for children aged 3 through 5, although officials in several states said that the amount was small. Similarly, 18 of the 19 states could not provide us with the percentage of children aged 3 through 5 who received services provided with School-age Grants. Many states could not report the extent to which School-age Grants fund services for 3 through 5 year-olds because of how expenditures are tracked. The states we contacted reported they track expenditures by budget functions, such as salaries or transportation, and not by individual services provided or ages of children receiving services. These states do not require LEAs to report expenditure data in a way that would allow them to determine the extent to which School-age Grants fund services for 3 through 5 year-olds, nor does IDEA require it. Education requires only that states report the number of children ages 3 through 5 collectively receiving special education and related services under School-age and Preschool Grants. IDEA does not require specific information about how many children are served under each. The effectiveness of these grant programs has not yet been evaluated, in part, because federal special education funds are only one source used to pay for services for this age group. Rather than functioning as operating programs, these grants add to the stream of funds supporting on-going state and local programs. Therefore, it is difficult to isolate the impact of federal funding for special education from the impact of other funding sources. Instead, studies have tended to focus on how IDEA is being implemented and on the overall progress of children who receive special education services, without directly attributing these outcomes to the receipt of particular services. In the 1997 amendments to IDEA, Congress mandated a full, national assessment to determine the progress in the implementation of IDEA, including the effectiveness of state and local efforts to provide a free public education appropriate for the needs of students with disabilities and to provide early intervention services to infants and toddlers. In response to this mandate, OSEP has contracted with several research organizations to complete a number of studies. None of these studies will attempt to isolate the contribution of IDEA grants from the effects of state and local efforts to improve outcomes for young children; Congress did not prescribe such a stringent assessment of program effectiveness.