If you disagree with the school's evaluation of your child, federal law gives you the right to an independent educational evaluation, often at public expense, and requires the district to act without unnecessary delay.
The evaluation meeting ends with scores that do not describe the child who lives in your house. You raise questions, the team stands by its numbers, and you drive home holding a report you do not believe.
Federal law anticipates exactly this moment and attaches a specific remedy to it: a second opinion, with rules the district must follow.
Under 34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(3)(i), an independent educational evaluation, usually shortened to IEE, is an evaluation conducted by a qualified examiner who is not employed by the public agency responsible for your child's education. At public expense means, under § 300.502(a)(3)(ii), that the district either pays the full cost of the evaluation or ensures you pay nothing.
The parents of a child with a disability have the right under this part to obtain an independent educational evaluation of the child, subject to paragraphs (b) through (e) of this section. ... Independent educational evaluation means an evaluation conducted by a qualified examiner who is not employed by the public agency responsible for the education of the child in question
34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(1), (a)(3)(i)
You do not need an open dispute to learn your options. Under § 300.502(a)(2), when you ask about an IEE, the district must give you information about where you can obtain one and the agency criteria that apply.
Under § 300.502(b)(1), you have the right to an IEE at public expense if you disagree with an evaluation the district obtained. Once you request one, § 300.502(b)(2) requires the district, without unnecessary delay, to do one of two things. It can file a due process complaint to request a hearing and show that its own evaluation is appropriate, or it can provide the IEE at public expense.
Sitting on the request is not among the options. A district that neither files nor pays, month after month, has stopped complying with the phrase "without unnecessary delay."
If the district files and the final decision is that its evaluation was appropriate, § 300.502(b)(3) still preserves your right to an IEE, though no longer at public expense.
Under § 300.502(b)(4), the district may ask why you object to its evaluation, and you can answer if you find it useful. The same paragraph states that the district may not require an explanation and may not use the question to unreasonably delay either providing the IEE at public expense or filing its due process complaint. Stating that you disagree with the evaluation is a complete request.
One limit applies. Section 300.502(b)(5) provides one IEE at public expense each time the district conducts an evaluation you disagree with, so a single district evaluation supports a single publicly funded IEE, and each new district evaluation brings a fresh opportunity to disagree.
Under § 300.502(e)(1), the criteria for a publicly funded IEE, including the location of the evaluation and the qualifications of the examiner, must match the criteria the district uses when it initiates its own evaluations, to the extent those criteria stay consistent with your right to an IEE. Beyond those criteria, § 300.502(e)(2) forbids the district from imposing other conditions or timelines on obtaining the evaluation.
An IEE changes the record whether or not the district paid for it. Under § 300.502(c), if you obtain an IEE at public expense, or you share a privately funded evaluation with the district, the district must consider the results, provided the evaluation meets agency criteria, in any decision about the provision of FAPE, the regulation's term for a free appropriate public education. Either side may present the evaluation as evidence at a due process hearing about your child.
Must consider does not mean must adopt, and a district can weigh an IEE and still disagree with it. What the district cannot do is ignore the evaluation, and a record showing that it did becomes significant if the dispute continues. This post offers general information rather than legal advice, and a special education attorney or your state's Parent Training and Information Center can advise you on a specific case.
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Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.502 (2017).
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. (2004).
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