The Outcomes of Fully Adjudicated Impartial Hearings under the IDEA: A Nationally Representative Analysis with and without New York

The purpose of this study was to determine the national outcomes distribution of DPH decision outcomes for a relatively recent six-year period. A secondary purpose was to determine whether New York decisions were such a distinct and major outlier to justify omitting them for a more precise picture of the overall outcomes account. The resulting research questions for this analysis were: 1. What is the overall outcomes distribution of DPH decisions among the fifty states and the District of Columbia? and 2. Was the outcomes distribution for the New York DPH decisions so distinct and their frequency so large as to differentiate this state in arriving at the overall representation of the outcomes of DPH decisions for the nation? The resulting analysis found the national distribution that includes New York is strongly skewed in favor of parents, with a limited proportion of decisions in the intermediate “mixed” category. Second, they found that New York accounted for the clear majority of the national total of fully adjudicated decisions, thus potentially having a major effect on the overall outcomes results. Overall, the skew in New York was overwhelmingly in favor of the parents, with a small percentage in the mixed category, whereas the national level without New York was skewed more moderately toward the district. This empirical analysis concluded that New York is a clear outlier. It not only accounts for two-thirds of all of the fully adjudicated decisions for this relatively recent six-year period, but also has a distinctly different outcomes pattern. Thus, ascertaining the overall outcomes distribution of fully adjudicated DPH decisions, New York (more specifically, New York City) should be differentiated from the rest of the nation. The major implication of the outlier conclusion is that both policymakers and stakeholders under the IDEA should differentiate New York in examining and evaluating the national outcomes distribution of DPH decisions.