South Dakota Independent Educational Evaluation: Your Right to a Second Opinion

Your child just went through a full school evaluation. The results came back. And something about them feels wrong — either the evaluators missed the mark on the severity of the disability, used an assessment tool poorly suited to your child, or reached conclusions that don't match what you see every day at home and what outside specialists have found. You are allowed to push back. Under federal and South Dakota law, you have the explicit right to request an Independent Educational Evaluation — and in many cases, the school district must pay for it.

This is one of the most powerful rights in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and one that many South Dakota parents never use because they don't know it exists.

What an Independent Educational Evaluation Is

An Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) is a full assessment of your child conducted by a qualified examiner who is not employed by the school district that conducted the original evaluation. The purpose is to get an outside, unbiased second opinion on your child's disability-related needs, educational functioning, or eligibility for special education services.

Under ARSD 24:05:30 and the federal regulations it implements, if you disagree with any evaluation your school district conducted — the initial eligibility evaluation, a reevaluation, a psychoeducational assessment, a speech-language evaluation, an occupational therapy evaluation, or any other assessment — you have the right to request an IEE at public expense. That means the school district pays the bill, not you.

The IEE can cover the same areas the district assessed, or it can focus on areas you believe the district missed or evaluated inadequately. The results of the IEE must be considered by the IEP team when making any decisions about your child's program and placement. The team is not required to adopt every recommendation, but they must genuinely consider the findings.

The District's Two Legal Options

When you submit a written request for an IEE at public expense, the school district has exactly two choices under South Dakota and federal law. There is no third option.

The first option: the district agrees to fund the evaluation. It must provide you with information about qualified independent evaluators and criteria it applies to evaluations it funds (such as evaluator credential requirements and geographic limits). Once you select a qualified evaluator, the district pays.

The second option: the district files a due process complaint to defend its original evaluation. This means the district formally disputes your request and asks a hearing officer to rule that its own evaluation was appropriate. If the hearing officer agrees with the district, you lose the right to a district-funded IEE — though you can still obtain one at your own expense. If the hearing officer agrees with you, the district must fund the IEE.

What the district cannot do is simply ignore your request, delay indefinitely, or tell you the IEE process does not apply to them. If the district receives your written request and takes no action, that is a procedural violation you can include in a formal state complaint to the SD DOE Office of Special Education Programs.

The timeline matters. Courts have generally found that districts must respond promptly — filing for due process without undue delay if they intend to challenge. If they drag their feet while not funding your IEE, that delay itself becomes evidence of non-compliance.

When to Request an IEE

You do not need a specific legal threshold of proof to request an IEE. You only need to disagree with the school's evaluation. Common reasons South Dakota parents request IEEs include:

• The district evaluation found no disability or mild impairment, but outside clinicians have diagnosed something more significant — autism, twice-exceptionality, a processing disorder, or a complex learning profile.
• The evaluation was conducted by a cooperative-assigned specialist who visited your child's school for only a few hours, and the resulting report feels thin or generic.
• The assessments used are outdated, were administered under conditions that compromised your child's performance, or were not appropriate for your child's linguistic or cultural background.
• The district's eligibility determination does not match your child's actual functioning.
• The evaluation was adequate for some domains but completely omitted areas of concern — for example, the district tested for cognitive ability and academic achievement but never assessed executive functioning or sensory processing.
• A reevaluation was conducted prior to a proposed reduction in services, and the findings conveniently supported removing services.

You should put your IEE request in writing. A brief letter or email to the special education director stating that you disagree with the evaluation conducted on a specific date and are requesting an IEE at public expense is sufficient. Keep a copy and note the date it was delivered.

The Rural Evaluator Problem in South Dakota

Finding a qualified independent evaluator is harder in South Dakota than in most states. Private neuropsychologists, speech-language pathologists, and occupational therapists who conduct independent evaluations are concentrated in Sioux Falls and Rapid City. Parents in frontier counties may face a three-hour drive to reach an evaluator, and waiting lists at university-based clinics can stretch for months.

South Dakota does have some lower-cost options worth knowing about. The University of South Dakota Center for Disabilities in Sioux Falls operates the LEND Developmental Clinic, which provides interdisciplinary evaluations for children from six months to six years old. Augustana University's Roseman Center for Speech, Language, and Hearing provides clinical assessments for speech and language disorders. These university programs can serve as independent evaluators in some situations, and their fees are often lower than private practitioners.

One thing to clarify upfront: cooperative staff are employees of the cooperative, not the local district, but they are typically considered part of the district's evaluation team for IEE purposes. A cooperative school psychologist who performed your child's assessment is not an independent evaluator. The independence requirement means no professional or organizational affiliation with the agency that conducted the original evaluation.

When the district sets criteria for IEE evaluators it will fund, those criteria must be reasonable and cannot be used to exclude all available evaluators in your region. If the district's criteria are so restrictive that no independent evaluator meets them, that creates a procedural problem for the district, not a dead end for you.

What Happens After the IEE Is Completed

Once the independent evaluator completes their assessment, the findings go to the IEP team. The team is legally required to consider the results. In practice, this means the IEP team reconvenes — either for a full meeting or an expedited review — to discuss what the IEE found and whether any changes to the child's eligibility determination, placement, goals, or services are warranted.

If the IEE uncovers needs the district's evaluation missed, the IEP team must address those needs. If the independent evaluator recommends a specific related service, a different placement, or additional evaluation in a new area, the team must genuinely engage with that recommendation, document their consideration of it, and explain in writing if they are not adopting it.

A district that receives a credible IEE report and simply ignores it — holding a perfunctory meeting and making no changes — is on shaky legal ground. If the IEP team's response to the IEE seems dismissive or formulaic, you can document your concerns in a dissenting statement at the meeting and subsequently file a state complaint with the SD DOE.

The state complaint process in South Dakota triggers a mandatory investigation that must be completed within 60 days. SD DOE investigators have found districts out of compliance for failures to properly consider IEE results. A well-documented complaint is one of the most effective tools available to South Dakota parents who cannot afford private legal representation — and Disability Rights South Dakota (DRSD) can provide free legal assistance if your situation escalates toward due process.

Key Points to Remember

The IEE right applies whenever you disagree with a school evaluation — you do not need to prove the evaluation was deficient. The district's only path to avoiding payment is to immediately file for due process. Your request must be in writing, and the district must respond without undue delay. Independent evaluators must be genuinely independent, meaning no connection to the district. IEE results must be considered by the IEP team, not rubber-stamped or ignored. And if the district's response is inadequate, you have the state complaint process and DRSD as backup.

If you are working through an IEE dispute or trying to understand what comes next after an evaluation you don't agree with, the South Dakota IEP & 504 Blueprint walks through evaluation rights, the IEP process, and the dispute pathways available to South Dakota families — including the specific ARSD rules you can cite in writing to your district.

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