III. MONITORING AND ENFORCEMENT
1. In order to achieve the desired Congressional intent of compliance with the law, CCD believes that specific indicators of States’ progress as well as Federal and State monitoring priorities, found in both versions, should be retained in the final bill. These are:
(House Sec. 616(b)(1)(A)(B)) Indicators of States’ Progress
- Achievement results on State or district assessments including use of accommodation;
- Achievement results on State or district alternate assessments; and
- Comparisons of graduation rates between children with disabilities and nondisabled children.
- Priorities for Part C
(Senate Sec. 616(a)(3)) Monitoring Priorities
- Provisions of FAPE in the LRE;
- Provision of transition services for students leaving school;
- States exercise of general supervisory authority, including the use of complaint resolution and mediation; and
- Overrepresentation of racial and ethnic groups to the extent this is the result of inappropriate policies, procedures and practices.
2. CCD supports the Senate version that adds language that the primary focus of Federal and State monitoring shall be on “improving educational results and functional outcomes for all children with disabilities, while ensuring compliance with program requirements, with particular emphasis on those requirements that are most likely related to improving educational results for children with disabilities.” (Sec. 616(a)(2)).
3. CCD supports the Senate requirements in (Sec. 616(e)) for state level monitoring that does not exist in the House bill. State level monitoring is essential if the State is to demonstrate that it is meeting its state supervision requirements.
Rationale: Among the most important issues to parents and disability advocates is the effective implementation and enforcement of IDEA. The Federal Government must ensure state special education programs comply with the IDEA. To do this effectively, it must have adequate data regarding IDEA implementation to validate its monitoring and the capacity to sanction states when necessary. Sanctions should be predictable and applied equally to all states and territories, based on student outcomes. As the National Council on Disabilities found “[o]verall, NCD finds that federal efforts to enforce the law over several Administrations have been inconsistent, ineffective, and lacked any real teeth.” Back to School on Civil Rights, Advancing the Federal Commitment to Leave No Child Behind, National Council on Disabilities, January 2000
The House and Senate bills require sanctions to stem directly from analysis of data collected. Experts in the field of monitoring agree that it is not effective to sanction or take enforcement action against states prematurely, based on data alone. The data should be used to indicate whether or not there may be a problem in any of the priority areas, but the U.S. Department of Education must do an investigation to determine the root cause, so that technical assistance and sanctions are tied to the actual problem that lead to the non-compliance.
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