The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires States* receiving grants under Part B to make available dispute resolution (DR) processes and report annually to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) on their performance. The processes, which include signed written state complaints (WSC), mediation, due process complaints (DPC), and expedited due process complaints, offer a formal means for resolving disagreements arising under the IDEA.

CADRE developed a National DR Longitudinal Database to gain a historical perspective of DR data to assist with the identification of trends and changes in the use of the IDEA DR processes over time. CADRE's National DR Data Dashboard provides users the ability to access this database to compare national and state DR data from 2004 to the present. Annual updates are released by OSEP, generally in the fall, for the previous year's school term. In November 2023, OSEP released the SY 2021-22 data included in this dashboard. 

We would greatly appreciate your feedback about CADRE's National Dispute Resolution Data Dashboard by responding to this brief survey. Contact Dr. Melanie Reese for questions related to dispute resolution data at mreese@directionservice.org.

CADRE gratefully acknowledges the collaboration with AEM Corporation in making this online database possible.

* For the purposes of this dashboard, the terms “states” are used interchangeably to refer to all 60 Part B grant recipients (i.e., the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau).

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About the Data

Data comprising this tool feature summaries from the following sources: [1] from SY 2004 to the present, dispute resolution activity and Part B Child Count (Table 1: Number of children and students served under IDEA, Part B, aged 3 through 21) as reported in states' Annual Performance Reports (APRs), first as Attachment 1 and later as Table 7; [2] from SY 2006 to the present, Section 618 data, including Part B Child Count (Table 1: Number of children and students served under IDEA, Part B, aged 3 through 21), reported by states and collected by the Data Accountability Center (DAC) and now (as of SY 2011) reported to EDFacts; [3] from data published in OSEP's Annual Report to Congress; [4] from SY 2004 to present summaries and analyses from CADRE's National Longitudinal Database; and [5] from data adjustments collected from states by CADRE after OSEP data were locked. Important note about the Mediations Withdrawn or Not Held and Mediations Pending data: For SY 2008 and earlier, data for these two categories were combined into one data set.

Annually, CADRE examines dispute resolution data for internally inconsistent values (based on report element definitions). When inconsistent values are found they are reconciled with OSEP. State agencies are encouraged to submit notes or explanations regarding any conditions, anomalies, or corrections relating to the data included here.

CADRE analyzes the data for each dispute resolution process in two ways: 1) as numbers of events ("Total Events") reported by states; and 2) as rates of events per 10,000 Child Count ("Per 10K Child Count"), representing those children receiving special education and related services as reported by each state in their APR. Given the differences among the states (e.g., population; geographical location) and variable levels of dispute resolution activity, comparing a "Per 10K Child Count" view allows more of an “apples to apples” comparison among individual states. The "Per 10K Child Count" view may be less useful when the state's Child Count is less than 10,000, however. 

The "Per 10K Child Count" calculation is:  the Number of DR Events divided by the State's Child Count, multiplied by 10,000.

 

National DR Data Summary (2021-22)


Recent Trends in Dispute Resolution (Updated December 2023)


OSEP's Section 618 Data Products Website