Since first being enacted in 1975, the Individu-als with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has provided educational benefits to countless students with disabilities, including those in homeless situations. However, in spite of numerous emendations to the Act—including a substantial overhaul in 1997—not all homeless children have been able to take full advantage of IDEA’s services and benefits. In December 2004, President Bush signed into law a reauthorization version of IDEA, now called the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004.” The amended legislation guarantees children in homeless situations complete access to educational services and assistance. With the exception of a few provisions, the Act will go into effect on 1 July 2005.1 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) contains several improvements related to the special education needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness. One notable revision is that the document now offers a definition of homeless children, which underscores both the special needs of this population and their specific entitlement to the services provided by the Act [Section 602(11)]. By deferring to the definition used in Section 725 of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, IDEIA establishes a correlation with that legislation and helps standardize the way homeless children are identified by state and federal agencies. To establish a systematic method for identifying all children in homeless situations who also have special educational needs, IDEIA requires each state to implement Child Find policies and procedures to locate and evaluate disabled children who are homeless, wards of the state, or in private schools [Section 612(a)(3)(A)]. Each state must develop and implement a method for determining which of these children need and are receiving special education and related services. When carrying out these and other mandates as they apply to children experiencing homelessness, states must concomitantly uphold the guidelines set forth in the McKinney-Vento Act [Section 612(a)(11)(A)(iii)]. States must also establish and maintain an advisory panel that will provide policy guidance related to special education for homeless children with disabilities and associated services for children with disabilities. The advisory panel will include “state and local education officials, including officials who carry out activities under subtitle B of title VII of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act” [Section 612(a)(21)(A) & (B)]. Under the emended Act, LEAs must ensure that “assessments of children with disabilities who transfer from one school district to another school district in the same academic year are coordinated with such children’s prior and subsequent schools, as necessary and as expeditiously as possible, to ensure prompt completion of full evaluations” [Section 614(b)(3)(D)].2 IDEIA also requires that evaluations be completed within 60 days after parents consent to the evaluation or within a timeframe established by the state. The time limit applies if:

• the new local educational agency is making sufficient progress to ensure a prompt completion of the evaluation, and
• parents and the new school district agree to a specific time when the evaluation will be completed.