CADRE's National Data on the Frequency of Due Process Hearing Decisions: Suggested Adjustments

Although occasional national frequency analyses of DPHs were based on a clearly incomplete database,  the federally funded Center on Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education (CADRE), which started in 1998, has filled the gap for approximately the last two decades. Various published analyses have used the CADRE data for DPH decisions or other dispute resolution indicators. The purpose of this short article is to suggest two adjustments: The first adjustment is specific to considering CADRE’s national DPH decision data. Specifically, this suggestion is to use the new dashboard to subtract the DPH decisions from New York from the national totals, thus providing for examining trends on a differentiated basis. The second suggestion, which extends to trends analysis on the state as well as national level, concerns the aforementioned "pending" category. the suggested adjustment to calculate the estimated disposition of the relatively large "pending" category of DPH cases reveals rather significant increases and slope changes in the overall fully adjudicated trends. It represents an additional way to examine the longitudinal trends on either a national or state basis. The advent of CADRE’s latest innovation, its dashboard, enables users to do such calculations on their own. Conversely, the recommendation is not for OSEP to change the scope of its 618 reports, because the ongoing system has provided uniformity and the addition of another category is of questionable cost-benefit in terms of both accuracy and efficiency, especially in light of the already expansive supervisory responsibilities of state education agencies under the IDEA and their continuing cumbersome data submission and collection tasks. Hopefully, this second suggested adjustment will stimulate other interested individuals or organizations in the CADRE community to formulate an improved way to account for the disposition of the data in the pending category.