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Tool 14: Choosing Your Independent Evaluator: Three Questions Before You Sign Anything

THE RULE

An independent educational evaluation (IEE) means testing by a qualified examiner who is not employed by your school district (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(3)(i)). When you request an IEE at public expense, the district may agree to fund it or may instead file a due process complaint to defend its own evaluation (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(2); Tool 13). If it funds, your choice of evaluator must meet the district’s criteria. Those criteria are limited: the location of the evaluation and the qualifications of the examiner must match what the district requires of its own evaluations (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(e)(1)). The district may not attach any other conditions or timelines (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(e)(2)).

If you ask, the district must give you information about where an IEE may be obtained and what its criteria are (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(a)(2)); ask for it in writing. Once the finished report is shared with the district, the IEP team must consider its results in any decision about your child’s free appropriate public education (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(c)(1)). That duty holds so long as the evaluation meets the district’s criteria.

That last clause - “meets agency criteria” - is why this tool exists. Pick the wrong evaluator and you can lose the funding, the consideration, or both.

WHY IT MATTERS

Not all IEE money buys the same report. One evaluator produces 30 pages of scores, a diagnosis, and a closing line that your child “would benefit from support.” Another produces the same scores plus a morning spent in your child’s actual classroom, recommendations specific enough to copy into an IEP, and a seat at the meeting to explain them. The two reports cost about the same. Only one of them is hard to shelve.

The team’s duty is to consider the report, not to obey it (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(c)(1)). So the report has to do its own persuading. A vague report is easy to consider and set aside in a single sentence. You get one IEE at public expense per district evaluation you dispute (34 C.F.R. § 300.502(b)(5)) - this is the tool for spending it well.