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Tool 13: The IEE: How to Make the District Pay for a Second Opinion

THE RULE

You have the right to ask for an independent educational evaluation - an IEE - at public expense whenever you disagree with an evaluation your school district performed (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(1)). The right traces to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) itself (20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(1)). “Independent” means the examiner is qualified and does not work for the district (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(3)(i)). “At public expense” means the district pays the full cost, or otherwise makes sure the evaluation costs you nothing (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(3)(ii)).

Read that first sentence again. It is a right to ask, not a right to receive. When your written request arrives, the district has exactly two lawful answers. It can agree to fund the IEE. Or it can file a due process complaint and ask a hearing officer to rule that its own evaluation was appropriate (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(2)). It must pick one of the two “without unnecessary delay.” Stalling is not a third option. Silence is not a fourth. If the district files and the hearing officer decides its evaluation was appropriate, you may still get an IEE - but at your own expense (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(3)).

Four smaller rules ride along with the big one:

• The district may ask why you disagree with its evaluation. But it cannot require an answer, and it cannot use your silence to delay its choice between funding and filing (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(4)).

• You are entitled to one IEE at public expense each time the district conducts an evaluation you disagree with (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(5)). One district evaluation, one publicly funded second opinion.

• If you ask, the district must give you information about where an IEE may be obtained and about its criteria for IEEs (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(2)).

• Whatever criteria the district applies - examiner qualifications, evaluation location - must be the same criteria it uses when it does its own evaluations. Beyond those criteria, it may not attach other conditions or timelines to your IEE (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(e)).

One more rule governs what happens after. Whether the public paid for the evaluation or you did, once you share it with the district, the results must be considered in any decision about your child’s free appropriate public education (FAPE), so long as the evaluation meets the district’s criteria (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(c)(1)). Either side may also present it as evidence at a due process hearing (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(c)(2)). And if a hearing officer orders an IEE as part of a hearing, the public pays for that one automatically (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(d)).

WHY IT MATTERS

Everything in special education flows downstream from the evaluation. Eligibility, classification, goals, services, placement - each one leans on what the testing found. If the district’s evaluation missed a disability, skipped an area, or read hard numbers too kindly, every page of the IEP inherits the error. The error then compounds, year after year, and your child does the paying.

The IEE is the law’s answer to an awkward arrangement: the same agency that must pay for services also controls the testing that decides whether services are owed. A second opinion from an examiner who does not answer to the district is how that work gets checked. Checked, not rubber-stamped - a good independent evaluator sometimes agrees with the district, and that answer has value too.

Here is what the stakes look like at the kitchen table. A district evaluation finds your third grader “within the average range” in reading and closes the file (Tool 11 covers that phrase). An independent evaluator tests more deeply, watches him in class, and finds a phonological processing deficit the screening instrument was never built to catch. One of those two documents changes what happens to him in fourth grade. The IEE exists so you can find out which one is right.

Section 300.502 gives parents who disagree with a district evaluation a way to seek an independent second look at public expense. The district may instead file due process to defend its evaluation, so this is a right to request, not an automatic approval. Cost varies by evaluator, region, and scope.