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U.S. Department of Education Releases Changes to IDEA RulesDecember 16, 2008—The U.S. Department of Education published changes to IDEA rules in the Federal Register on December 1, 2008. These changes take effect on December 28, 2008. IDEA rules are changed to now allow parents to choose to revoke, unilaterally, their decision to give consent to have their child receive special education services and a free, appropriate public education. A local school district may ask parents why they are withdrawing their consent for a child to receive special education services, but no explanation is required. This change means when parents request that their child be removed from special education services, the child must receive general education services. This also means that a child whose parents no longer give their consent for them to receive special education services would also lose some protections that special education students who have discipline problems related to their disabilities would have. Parents also may request to have their child re-evaluated for special education services even if they revoked their consent earlier for their child to receive special education services. New federal regulations permit states to decide whether individuals who are not lawyers are allowed under State law to actually represent parents of students with disabilities in due process hearings. Parents may continue to represent themselves in due process hearings. The new IDEA rules say that if a local school district is found to be out of compliance with any IDEA provisions the district has one year from the time a problem is noted until it must be corrected. Prior to these changes there was no time limit for local school districts to correct noncompliance with IDEA provisions. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the rules change is because local school districts were not fixing identified IDEA non-compliance problems quickly enough, developing short-term or interim solutions at least, while figuring out longer-term or more complex ways to comply. | |||||
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