D.C. Letter 3: The Independent Educational Evaluation Request
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Correspondence. District of Columbia. Cross references: DC-Tool 16; DC-Tool 19.
When to Use It
Use this letter when you disagree with an evaluation [LEA Name] has conducted, whether the disagreement is about the eligibility conclusion, the areas assessed, or the instruments used. Once you disagree with the LEA's evaluation, federal law puts the LEA to a choice: fund an independent educational evaluation at public expense, or file a due process complaint to defend its own evaluation. If the LEA files and the hearing officer upholds its evaluation, you keep the right to an independent evaluation, just not at public expense (34 C.F.R. 300.502(b)(1) through (3)). D.C. codifies the IEE right at 5-A DCMR 3038, checked August 13, 2026. Do not confuse this with the statutory $6,000 expert-fee recovery in DC-Tool 19, which is a separate, court-awarded pathway and does not fund an IEE beyond what this right already covers.
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- The Letter
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The full D.C. Hearing Room - the step-by-step moves for the ordinary IDEA due process hearing in Washington, D.C., the scripts, the packet documents, and the District of Columbia overlay - is its own membership, separate from the Field Manual membership and the Hearing Room membership.
The D.C. Hearing Room membership opens soon.