The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) State and Local Implementation Study 2019
Contract Information
Current Status:
Underway
Duration:
September 2017 – February 2025
Cost:
$4,776,993
Contract Number:
ED-IES-17-C-0069
Contractor(s):
Mathematica Policy Research
National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools
Walsh Taylor Inc.
Contact:
Federal policy has long played a key role in educating the more than one in every ten US children who are identified with a disability. But the context for those policies has been shifting. Court decisions, regulations, and guidance, students' increasing language diversity, and environmental and health issues like the opioid crisis are expected to have influenced both the extent of supports needed and the ways practitioners and officials work to meet those needs through early intervention and special education. This study collected information that can provide a national picture of IDEA implementation 15 years after the law was last updated. Study products describe how states and districts have adapted their policies and practices to the changing landscape in selected key policy areas, comparing data from 2019 to data from a similar study conducted in 2009. This information will lay the groundwork for an upcoming reauthorization of IDEA.
- How were state and district practices aligned with IDEA's goals of appropriately identifying children with disabilities?
- To what extent did schools provide professional development and other resources to general educators to support the students with disabilities in their classrooms?
This implementation study is descriptive. Data collection included surveys of state administrators from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and territories receiving IDEA funding, as well as surveys of a nationally representative sample of 688 school districts and 2,750 schools about the 2019–20 school year.
A report, titled Appropriate Identification of Children with Disabilities for IDEA Services: A Report from Recent National Estimates, was released in June 2024.
A supplemental volume, titled IDEA State and Local Implementation Study 2019: Compendium of Survey Results, was released in September 2023.
A restricted-use file containing de-identified data is available for the purposes of replicating study findings and conducting secondary analyses.
The next report for the study is expected in 2025 and will be announced on https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/.
Key findings from the first report include:
- Most states and districts reported broad efforts to find children with suspected disabilities, as encouraged by IDEA, but with less emphasis on intensive approaches for younger children.
- Reported policies and practices for evaluating children with suspected disabilities—including use of specialized assessments, data on progress made when struggling students are given extra supports, or strategies to address potential cultural bias in the evaluation process—suggest that states and districts were trying to be sensitive to each child's needs and therefore more accurate in identification, but challenges with linguistically and culturally responsive evaluation remain.
- Despite federal efforts to encourage more consistent detection of large racial and ethnic disparities in special education identification, state differences in how disparities were defined may have limited detection in some cases.
Key findings will be updated when the next report is released.