Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004

Improving Education Results for Children With Disabilities Act of 2003 - Amends the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to revise its programs and to reauthorize appropriations permanently for its part B programs and through FY 2009 for its other programs.Title I: General Provisions - (Sec. 101) Revises definitions. Requires a free appropriate public education to be reasonably calculated to provide educational benefit to enable the child with a disability to access the general curriculum. Provides that the term highly qualified, as it relates to teachers, has the same meaning as under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA).(Sec. 102) Revises requirements relating to employment of qualified individuals with disabilities in IDEA programs to emphasize employment as teachers, related services personnel, early intervention providers, and administrators.Revises requirements for prescribing regulations, including policy letters, statements, and correspondence. Limits the Secretary of Education's authority to prescribe regulations to those that are reasonably necessary to ensure compliance with specific requirements of IDEA. Reduces the minimum required public comment period for part B or C regulations from 90 to 60 days.(Sec. 103) Requires States receiving IDEA funds to: (1) ensure that relevant State rules, regulations, and policies conform to IDEA purposes, as well as support and facilitate local educational agency (LEA) and school-level systemic reform designed to enable children with disabilities to meet challenging State student academic achievement standards; and (2) minimize the number of rules, regulations, and policies to which LEAs and schools are subject under IDEA.(Sec. 104) Directs the Comptroller General (GAO Review) to review and report on IDEA-related matters concerning: (1) Federal, State, and local paperwork requirements, with recommendations to reduce or eliminate excessive paperwork burdens; (2) biennially on disability definitions and evaluation processes, including variations among States and conformance with scientific, peer-reviewed research; (3) distance learning professional development programs for special education personnel; and (4) services for limited English proficient children with disabilities.Title II: Assistance for Education of All Children With Disabilities - Amends IDEA part B to revise requirements and permanently reauthorize funds for assistance for education of all children with disabilities (programs for those aged three through five and those aged six through 21).(Sec. 201) Reauthorizes appropriations for part B programs in specified amounts for FY 2004 through 2010 and in necessary amounts for FY 2011 and each subsequent fiscal year. (Thus providing for permanent authorization of funds for part B of IDEA.)Revises requirements for grants for States, outlying areas, and Indian schools.Increases the part B set-aside funding cap to $7,500,000.Sets the maximum amount which a State may use for cost or risk sharing funds, consortia, or cooperatives to assist LEAs in providing high cost special education and related services at 40 percent of the funds the State may retain for administration and other State-level activities.Requires States to allocate increases in their IDEA funding above FY 2003 levels to LEAs, with specified exceptions.(Sec. 202) Revises State eligibility requirements. Requires a State to reasonably demonstrate to the Secretary (currently, demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Secretary) that it has in effect policies and procedures to ensure that it meets certain conditions. Conforms IDEA with NCLBA requirements relating to State personnel standards, performance goals and indicators, and LEA permitted uses of funds for additional expenses for providing supplemental educational services for children with disabilities who are being educated in a school identified for school improvement.Revises requirements relating to children with disabilities in private schools. Requires completion of the child find process for children in private schools in a time period comparable to that for public school students. Prohibits reimbursement from being reduced or denied to parents of children with disabilities in private schools on the basis of their noncompliance with a specified notice requirement if: (1) the school prevented the parent from providing a required notice, (2) the parents had not received notice from the LEA; (3) compliance would likely result in physical harm to the child; or (4) in the discretion of a court or a hearing officer, if the parent is illiterate or cannot write in English or compliance would likely result in serious emotional harm to the child.Requires for State eligibility for IDEA: (1) State adoption of a national instructional materials accessibility standard in providing such materials to blind persons or other persons with print disabilities and a State purchase requirement for publishers of instructional materials to prepare and supply electronic files with such materials' contents using such standard; (2) State policies and procedures to prevent overidentification or disproportionate representation by race and ethnicity of children as children with disabilities, including identification of children as children with a particular impairment; and (3) State educational agency (SEA) development and implementation of policies and procedures prohibiting school personnel from requiring a child, as a condition of attending school or receiving services, to obtain a prescription for a controlled substance in schedule II under specified requirements of the Controlled Substances Act (thus prohibiting school personnel from coercing children to receive, or their parents to administer, psychotropic medication).(Sec. 203) Revises LEA eligibility requirements for part B assistance, including a reasonable demonstration to the State (rather than a demonstration to the satisfaction of the State) that LEA policies, procedures, and programs are consistent with State policies and procedures. Revises requirements for supplementing and not supplanting other special education funds, and for maintenance of effort. Requires (currently permits) an SEA, if authorized by State law and if it determines that an LEA is unable to establish and maintain programs of free appropriate public education, to prohibit the LEA from counting a portion of the increase in its IDEA grants from one year to the next as meeting such requirements. Allows other LEAs to use their own increased IDEA funds for ESEA programs.Requires LEAs to: (1) serve children with disabilities attending public charter schools in the same manner as they do in their other public schools, including providing supplemental and related services on site if they have such a policy or practice; and (2) provide part B funds to public charter schools on the same basis as they do to their other public schools (including, at LEA option, proportional distribution based on relative enrollment of children with disabilities) and at the same time as they distribute other Federal funds to those schools, consistent with the State's charter law.Includes among permissible uses of part B funds by LEAs: (1) prereferral educational support services; (2) cost or risk sharing funds, consortia, or cooperatives to assist them in providing high cost special education and related services; (3) case management and administration technology; and (4) supplemental educational services for children with disabilities in schools designated for improvement. Allows LEAs to use up to 15 percent of a part B grant for prereferral educational support services for students who have not been identified as needing special education or related services but who need additional academic and behavioral support to succeed in a general education environment. Provides for such services from kindergarten to 12th grade, with emphasis on kindergarten through third grade.(Sec. 204) Revises requirements for evaluations, assessments, and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), and educational placements.Allows LEAs to pursue an initial evaluation if the parent does not provide consent or respond to an LEA request for such consent. Provides that, if the parent does not provide consent for IDEA services or fails to respond to an LEA request for such consent, the LEA shall not: (1) provide special education and related services to the child through specified procedures; (2) be obligated to hold an IEP meeting or prepare an IEP; or (3) be considered to be in violation of any part B requirement (including the requirement to make available a free appropriate public education).Revise requirements for IEPs to eliminate, as of the beginning of the 2005-2006 school year, a requirement for benchmarks and short-term objectives. Limits certain IEP information to what is specifically required. Allows regular education teachers to be excused from attendance at IEP team meetings under certain circumstances. Allows the parents and the LEA to agree to: (1) excuse any IEP team member from attending a meeting when such member's attendance is not necessary; (2) not reconvene the IEP team and instead develop a written document to amend or modify the current IEP; and (3) use alternate means of meeting participation, such as video conference and conference calls. Authorizes LEAs to offer parents the option of developing a comprehensive multi-year IEP, of not more than three years, designed to cover natural transition points for the child.Requires an LEA to ensure that certain assessments of a child are provided and administered in the language and form most likely to yield accurate academic and developmental data, unless it is clearly not feasible to do so. (Current law requires that this be done to the extent practicable).Expresses the sense of Congress that: (1) students who have not been diagnosed by a physician or other person certified by a State health board as having a disability (as defined under IDEA) should not be classified as children with disabilities for purposes of receiving services under IDEA; and (2) students with behavioral problems who have not been diagnosed by a physician or other person certified by a State health board as having a disability should be subject to the regular school disciplinary code.(Sec. 205) Revises requirements for procedural safeguards, including those for notices.Establishes a statute of limitations on complaints, allowing a complaint only with respect to violations that occurred within one year before the complaint's filing.Requires mediation procedures to be available for matters arising prior to, as well as after, the filing of a complaint. Requires alternative voluntary binding arbitration procedures to be available when a due process hearing is requested.Allows due process hearings to be requested by either parents or LEAs (currently by the parents only). Requires such hearings to be conducted by the SEA. (Currently the SEA or the LEA, as State law provides, may conduct such a hearing, with a right of appeal to the SEA if the LEA conducts it.) Requires the LEA, prior to the due process hearing, to convene a resolution session, meeting with the parents and a team of qualified professionals, to which certain procedural safeguards would not apply. Prohibits, unless both parties agree otherwise, allowing any party to raise issues at the due process hearing that were not raised in the complaint, discussed in the resolution session meeting, or properly disclosed under requirements for evaluations and recommendations.Directs the State Governor or other appropriate State official to set, and publish annually, the attorneys' fees that may be awarded in actions or proceedings under IDEA (currently such fees are set by the court that hears the case).Authorizes school personnel to change the placement of a child with a disability who violates a code of student conduct to an appropriate interim alternative educational setting selected so as to enable the child to continue to participate in the general education curriculum and to progress toward IEP goals. Allows such change for: (1) not more than 45 school days, to the extent such alternative and such duration would be applied to children without disabilities, and with authorized discretion to include consideration of unique circumstances on a case-by-case basis; or (2) more than 45 days, if required by State law or regulation for the violation in question, to ensure the safety and appropriate educational atmosphere in the schools. Eliminates requirements: (1) requiring a determination be made concerning whether a child's action was a manifestation of the child's disability; and (2) if the child's behavior was not a manifestation of such disability, allowing application to that child of relevant disciplinary procedures applicable to children without disabilities in the same manner in which they would be applied to such children, but with no cessation of educational services to the child with disabilities.(Sec. 206) Adds requirements for monitoring and enforcement to requirements for withholding and judicial review. Sets forth requirements for Federal monitoring, including required indicators for States' progress on improving educational results for children with disabilities, permitted indicators and priorities for part B and for part C, setting of additional priorities, standards for compliance, and penalties for noncompliance.(Sec. 207) Authorizes the Secretary to carry out a demonstration program of granting waivers of IDEA paperwork requirements for up to four years for up to ten States, based on State proposals for addressing reduction of paperwork and non-instructional time spent fulfilling statutory and regulatory requirements. Requires the annual report of the Department of Education to Congress to include information on the efficacy and promise of such waivers.Directs the Secretary to publish and disseminate to States, LEAs, and parent training and information centers model forms for IEPs, procedural safeguards notices, and prior written notices.(Sec. 208) Revises requirements for State program information to include data: (1) by race, ethnicity, and disability category, in information on the number of children with disabilities who are subject to long-term suspensions or expulsions; and (2) on disproportionality with regard to the incidence, duration, and type of disciplinary actions, including suspensions and expulsions, in information on whether significant disproportionality based on race is occurring with regard to identification and placement.(Sec. 209) Reauthorizes appropriations in a specified amount for FY 2004 and in necessary amounts for each subsequent fiscal year for the part B preschool grants program for special education and related services for preschool children with disabilities. (Thus provides for permanent authorization of funds for such program.)Title III: Infants and Toddlers With Disabilities - Amends IDEA part C to revise requirements, and reauthorize funds through FY 2009, for programs for infants and toddlers with disabilities (from birth through age two).(Sec. 301) Includes certain children with disabilities ages three to five in the definition of an infant or toddler with a disability.Provides that the parents and the individualized family service plan team may determine the most appropriate setting for early intervention services for an infant or toddler.(Sec. 302) Reauthorizes appropriations for part C programs in a specified amount for FY 2004 and necessary amounts for FY 2005 through 2009.Title IV: National Activities to Improve Education of Children with Disabilities - Amends IDEA part D to revise and reauthorize requirements for national activities to improve the education of children with disabilities.(Sec. 401) Revises subpart 1 as State professional development grants. Authorizes the Secretary, in making such grants, to give priority to applications: (1) on the basis of need; and (2) that provide for establishing professional development programs regarding methods of early and appropriate identification of children with disabilities. Requires that at least 90 percent of such grant funds be used for specified professional development activities. Allows up to ten percent to be used for certain State activities. Reauthorizes appropriations for subpart 1 in a specified amount for FY 2004 and necessary amounts for FY 2005 through 2009.Revises subpart 2 requirements for scientifically-based research, technical assistance, model demonstration programs, and personnel preparation programs.Establishes a National Center for Special Education Research to conduct research on improving special education and related services for children with disabilities. Places the Center in the Institute of Education Sciences, with the Center's Commissioner to be appointed by the Institute's Director. Authorizes the Institute's Director to make competitive grants for research to improve educational results for children with disabilities. Requires the Center to propose and implement a research plan.Revises personnel preparation programs with respect to activities for: (1) regular and special education teachers, related services personnel, and early intervention services; (2) teachers of children with low-incidence disabilities; and (3) leadership preparation. Includes among personnel preparation programs training for: (1) school safety personnel and first responders working at qualified educational facilities; and (2) service providers for children with low-incidence disabilities with limited English proficiency.Reauthorizes appropriations for certain subpart 2 programs in specified amounts for FY 2004 and necessary amounts for FY 2005 through 2009.Reauthorizes appropriations, in specified amounts for FY 2004 and necessary amounts for FY 2005 through 2009, for: (1) grant, contract, and technical assistance for parent training and information centers and community parent resource centers; and (2) grants and contracts with eligible entities to support technology development, demonstration, and implementation, and media services. (Transfers such requirements to a new subpart 3, Supports to Improve Results for Children with Disabilities.)Title V: Miscellaneous Provisions - (Sec. 501) Expresses the sense of Congress that safe and drug-free schools are essential for the learning and development of children with disabilities.(Sec. 502) Directs the Secretary to study and report to Congress on costs to States to comply with the requirements of IDEA.