Assignment Compliance Hearings Idea

¶ … Individuals With Disabilities Education Act: Compliance Hearings Compliance Hearings: IDEA The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) IDEA is the driving force behind fairness and access for millions of students with special needs. Although it has opened the door for many, there are still instances of noncompliance among school districts.

Is the current use of compliance hearings the best way to ensure that students with special needs are receiving the best quality education? Why or why not? It is true that IDEA has done a lot to make education more accessible and favorable for children with special needs (Imber et al., 2013).

Working complementarily with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy, IDEA has led to the development of a federal monitoring and compliance system that has made school districts not only more compliant with the provisions of IDEA, but also more focused on maximizing the education outcomes of students with special needs (AASA, 2013). Compliance hearings have resulted in an increased propensity on the part of school districts to improve the academic outcomes of students with special needs or risk oversight and penalties (AASA, 2013).

If a district, for instance, following a compliance hearing is found to be noncompliant with one or more statutory requirements for students with special needs, it risks losing federal funds and being subjected to intensive monitoring from federal and state education officials (AASA, 2013). Such hearings have thus gone a long way towards ensuring that students with special needs are receiving quality education. I, however, do not think that compliance hearings are the best way to maximize the educational outcomes of students with disabilities.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, such hearings expend huge chunks of school districts' resources and this impedes on the districts' ability to provide enhanced academic services to children with special needs (AASA, 2013). It is estimated that on average, a district involved in a compliance hearing spends $10, 512 in legal fees, and one required to compensate parents for attorney fees incurs $19, 241 in such fees (AASA, 2013).

If individual personnel and district officials are too busy fighting the legal actions of one parent or a group of parents, then it is likely that they are spending less time and financial resources enhancing the learning outcomes of the rest of the learners. Moreover, such hearings often take lots of time, and it could take months for a decision to be reached. All these take a substantial amount of time, dollars and emotional capital, which could otherwise be put in activities geared at enhancing the academic outcomes of learners.

Additionally, owing to the publicity and attention that such hearings receive from the media, it is possible that they could affect the personnel involved psychologically. In a 2014 study seeking to assess the effect of compliance hearings on special education teachers, the School Superintendents Association (AASA) found that teachers often experience high levels of stress during a compliance hearing and the subsequent litigation, and more than 50% of them either request a transfer out of special education or leave the district following such exposures (AASA, 2013).

Such hearings could, therefore, lead a school or school district to lose effective special education personnel, and with time, this could affect the district's ability to provide quality education to learners with special needs. Finally, such hearings encourage inequity in the society. The high legal fees involved hinder most low and middle income families from challenging their districts' special education services (AASA, 2013). When this happens, the districts continue to be non-complaint, and students with special needs continue to suffer and to be offered low-quality educational services.

To address these issues, AASA proposes the use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. Mediations and IEP facilitations could be organized between school districts and aggrieved parents to resolve disputes surrounding the latter's special education framework. Such out-of-court settlements would significantly reduce the financial and emotional burden borne by school districts and parents involved in compliance hearings (AASA, 2013).

Question 2: What is the most significant model used for a compliance hearing? What would be expected to result from this model? The model used for a compliance hearing in most states can be summarized as: Due process Mediation Resolution Session Due process hearing Litigation Complaint (optional) If a parent feels that the school district failed to "provide a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment for their child," they are allowed to file a due process complaint against the district (AASA, 2013, p. 17).

This complaint initiates the compliance hearing process (AASA, 2013). An IEP meeting could then be organized between the aggrieved.