Evaluating Children for Disability
The purpose of this thorough explanation is to make sure that parents are fully informed, understand what is being proposed (or refused), understand what evaluation of their child will involve (or why the school system is refusing to conduct an evaluation of the child), and understand their right to refuse consent for evaluation, or to otherwise exercise their rights under IDEA’s procedural safeguards if the school refuses to evaluate.
All written communication from the school must be in a form the general public can understand. It must be provided in parents’ native language if they do not read English, or in the mode of communication, they normally use (such as Braille or large print) unless it is clearly not feasible to do so. If parents’ native language or another mode of communication is not a written language, the school must take steps to ensure:
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that the notice is translated orally (or by other means) to parents in their native language or another mode of communication,
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that parents understand the content of the notice, and
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that there is written evidence that the above two requirements have been met.
Parental Consent
Before the school may proceed with the evaluation, parents must give their informed written consent. This consent is for the evaluation only. It does not mean that the school has the parents’ permission to provide special education services to the child. That requires a separate consent.
If parents refuse consent for an initial evaluation (or simply don’t respond to the school’s request), the school must carefully document all its attempts to obtain consent. It may also continue to pursue conducting the evaluation by using the law’s due process procedures or it's mediation procedures unless doing so would be inconsistent with state law relating to parental consent.parent
However, if the child is home-schooled or has been placed in a private school by parents (meaning, the parents are paying for the cost of the private school), the school may not override parents’ lack of consent for initial evaluation of the child. As the Department of Education (2006) notes:
…once parents opt out of the public-school system, States and school districts do not have the same interest in requiring parents to agree to the evaluation of their children. In such cases, it would be overly intrusive for the school district to insist on an evaluation of a parent’s objection. (71 Fed. Reg. at 46635)