IDEA is the primary federal law that addresses the unique needs of children with disabilities, including specific learning disabilities, speech and language impairments, mental retardation, and serious emotional disturbance. The law mandates that a free appropriate public education be made available for all eligible children with disabilities, ensures due process rights, requires an IEP for each student, and requires the placement of children with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. In school year 2002, more than 6 million children aged 3 through 21 received education services under the act at a federal cost of approximately $8 billion. In addition, state governments provided more than $48 billion in additional funding to implement the act’s requirements. Under IDEA and the 1999 implementing federal regulations on discipline, schools must follow certain procedures to remove a student from his or her educational setting for disciplinary purposes. Specifically, schools may suspend a special education student for up to 10 school days in a given school year without providing educational services. Under the regulations, school personnel in consultation with the child’s special education teacher are required to determine the educational services needed to enable the child to appropriately progress in the general curriculum and appropriately advance toward achieving the goals set out in the child’s IEP. In addition, schools may repeatedly suspend a special education student on a short-term basis (not more than 10 days) even if the suspensions cumulatively total more than 10 school days, so long as educational services are provided to the student after the tenth suspension day in a given school year. The regulations also allow schools to remove a special education student for up to 45 days to an interim alternative educational setting if the student commits a weapons or drug violation at school or is determined by a hearing officer to be a danger to self or others. Additionally, if school officials request an extension, a hearing officer may extend this 45-day removal period. Because school districts are provided considerable leeway in determining disciplinary placements, they choose many settings to function as disciplinary placements including, for example, in-school suspension rooms, alternative schools, out of school suspensions at home, and homebound placements. The difference between homebound placements and out-of-school suspensions at home is that homebound placements were generally used for extended periods and involved service provisions, while out-of-school suspensions at home were used for short periods of under 10 days and generally did not include the provision of instructional services. School personnel and the student’s IEP team are responsible for making decisions regarding the appropriateness of disciplinary settings. A hearing officer or court may also make the decisions. In 2001, we studied how IDEA regulations affected the ability of schools to maintain a safe learning environment and whether regular and special education students are disciplined in a similar manner. We found that IDEA regulations played only a limited role in affecting schools’ ability to properly discipline students and that in cases of serious misconduct, regular and special education students were disciplined in a similar manner. Although the study briefly touched upon the role alternative placements play in the disciplinary process for special education students, a description of the characteristics of these settings and the extent of their use fell outside of the study’s scope. Moreover, the study focused on serious student misconduct (drugs, weapons, assault, rape, sexual assault, and robbery) and did not focus on less serious offenses. Disciplined special education students were primarily placed in one of two short-term disciplinary settings: in-school suspension rooms or out-of school suspension at home, according to survey respondents in three selected states. The length of a student’s removal was a key consideration in placement decisions. Because most disciplined special education students were generally removed for short periods of time, these two short-term disciplinary settings were the most frequently used. Students removed for longer periods (exceeding 10 days) were more likely to be placed in settings with greater access to service providers, such as alternative schools or homebound placements. Other factors affecting placement decisions included the cumulative number of days a student had been removed, the cost and availability of placement options and the nature of the student offense. Our survey results indicated that the placements of disciplined special education students were similar to those of disciplined regular education students. Of the 32 school officials who responded to our survey and could provide student removal rate data, 31 reported that either in-school suspension rooms or out-of-school suspensions at home were the most frequently used placements for disciplined special education students. While district special education administrators and school officials primarily used short- term placements, such as in-school suspension rooms and out-of-school suspensions at home, to discipline special education students, they also reported placing special education students in longer-term disciplinary placements such as alternative schools and homebound placements. According to survey respondents, about two-thirds of the districts and one-quarter of the schools used these types of placements; they were used much less frequently than short-term settings. In addition to the length of the student’s removal, school and district administrators reported considering several other factors when making placement decisions, including the cumulative number of days the student had been removed during the school year, the cost and availability of placement options, and the student’s offense. First, because federal law provides that special education students may not be removed for more than 10 days in a school year without the provision of services, schools and districts considered the cumulative number of days a special education student had previously been removed when making placement decisions for special education students. If a special education student was about to exceed or had already exceeded the 10-day limit, schools and districts generally placed the student in settings with access to service providers, such as alternative schools or homebound settings with services. Second, due to cost and administrative concerns, most schools and districts in the states we visited only placed disciplined students in those placements to which they had readily available access. Under special circumstances, such as unique student needs or court orders, schools would remove students to placements that they did not normally use such as residential schools that may be located outside of the school district. If a placement with greater access to service providers was not available or was too costly, some school and district officials reported that they reduced the length of the student’s removal or eliminated the removal all together. In addition, the schools that we visited in our study sometimes used the practice of “banking” removal days, or allowing them to be “saved” and served later, to make sure that the total number of days a student was removed did not exceed 10 for a given school year. According to national education organization officials, “banking” removal days is not an uncommon practice because it allows school officials to ensure that disciplined students do not reach the 10-day limit early in the school year. Finally, students’ offenses and required disciplinary actions were also considerations in placing a disciplined student. The schools districts we visited operated under a student conduct code that required specific disciplinary action for various offenses. The student conduct code therefore often dictated placement decisions. For example, a weapons or drugs offense might require placement at an alternative school, whereas a lesser infraction, such as being disruptive, might require an in-school suspension. Disciplinary placements of special education students were similar to those of other students, based on our survey results. In addition, schools and districts generally used the same criteria in determining where to place students. However, administrators reported considering cumulative days that a student had been removed when placing special education students but not when making placement decisions for regular education students. In the 2001-2002 school year, schools and school district officials in the three states that we studied reported providing a range of services to disciplined special education students. However, how schools and school districts provided educational and other services varied significantly. School district officials reported that they generally did not provide any services to assist returning special education students in acclimating to their regular educational setting after a disciplinary placement, and the provision of such services is not required by law. The educational services provided to students in disciplinary settings varied considerably by the degree to which the service included active instruction. For example, in one school, educational services for a disciplined student consisted of an academic packet, which was generally the material the student would miss when he or she was away from the regular educational setting. When presented with a packet, it was up to the student to work through and complete the packet. In another district, educational services in disciplinary settings included active instruction, such as tutoring by special education instructional personnel. However, the amount of time spent giving the disciplined student this instruction varied considerably. For example, in one district, a special education student in a disciplinary setting received 6 hours of active instruction per day, while in other schools they received no instruction. Further, according to the district officials we surveyed, the qualifications of instructional staff varied widely across placements and disciplinary settings. For example, the survey respondents in our study reported that educators at alternative schools were more likely to be certified, while instructional staff in in-school suspension rooms and homebound placements ranged in qualifications from fully certified to uncertified. Special education students in disciplinary placements may have access to other services in addition to educational services, although the availability of these services varied. The type of service provided usually depended on the needs of the student as defined in the student’s IEP as well as the availability of services within the school district. In addition to educational services, other services could be made available during disciplinary placements to meet the requirements of the IEP, according to survey results. These services could include: counseling and other related services. Counseling by a guidance counselor was also commonly made available to disciplined students. Related services such as speech pathology and occupational therapy were less available. The availability of services and providers was in large part determined by where a student was placed while being disciplined. For example, students placed in alternative schools generally had access to most services and providers, whereas disciplined students placed in out-of-school suspensions at home rarely had access to services other than educational services.