Strengthening Accountability and General Supervision Systems: TA to Improve State DMS Visits and More

Updated April 15, 2026

---

Background

In 2016, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) provided differentiated monitoring and support (DMS) to states as part of its results driven accountability (RDA) system. Under RDA, OSEP shifted from monitoring based solely on compliance to monitoring and support focused on both compliance and improving results for children with disabilities. OSEP selected states for technical assistance (TA) and monitoring visits based on their risk factors. OSEP differentiated its approach based on each state's unique strengths, progress, challenges, and needs. In the fall of 2020, OSEP launched DMS 2.0. The DMS 2.0 process consists of five separate cohorts of states that OSEP will monitor on a cycle beginning in 2022.

As part of DMS 2.0, OSEP focuses primarily on four topic areas: fiscal, monitoring, data, and dispute resolution. Other areas, such as child find and early childhood transition, may be incorporated into the state's DMS engagement depending on the state's challenges or needs that OSEP identifies. The Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center and its partners—Center for IDEA Fiscal Reporting (CIFR), Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data System (DaSy), and The Center for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education (CADRE)—provide TA to help states prepare for the DMS 2.0 process and OSEP monitoring visit.

---

How TA Supported States with Their DMS Visit

Cross-State Calls and Individualized TA

The DMS TA team members have provided a combination of cross-state and individualized TA to help states:

• Prepare for the OSEP DMS visit.
• Share information with OSEP about how they are implementing their systems.
• Improve their systems and address all required actions outlined in their OSEP DMS reports.

Cross-state quarterly DMS TA calls began in January 2023. They included content presentations, state sharing of their DMS experiences, and opportunities for discussion in relation to the four topic areas.

---

Topical Working Series

This topic specific TA series was developed as a direct result of insights gained supporting Cohort 1 states. The TA Team also launched a topic specific series to foster a deep and comprehensive understanding of federal requirements while outlining system improvement strategies actively being implemented as state best practices. Launched in March 2023, the four sessions in the series focused on fiscal, monitoring, data, and dispute resolution. TA activities included:

• Sharing resources.
• Reviewing state materials.
• Conducting mock interviews so states can practice telling their state story during their OSEP visit.

ECTA's internal evaluation team and external evaluator, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), and the TA Team identified Indiana and Montana as states that realized positive impacts as a result of TA. PIRE conducted an interview discussion with each of these states to obtain detailed information about their experiences and the associated impacts related to engaging in the DMS 2.0 TA. Their impact stories are outlined below.

---

Indiana

Indiana engaged with the TA Team by participating in:

• Quarterly DMS learning community calls.
• Three topic-specific learning sessions on monitoring and improvement, dispute resolution, and fiscal management.

The TA Team worked with Indiana to review critical files for the document request process and system overview presentations. This ensured the state could clearly communicate its procedures to OSEP. The TA Team also participated remotely in Indiana's OSEP visit in August 2024.

The Indiana state team identified enhancements to their general supervision system as the most significant change as a result of the TA. They noted that their monitoring processes had been embedded in institutional knowledge and passed down without being systematically written down. Although working for their system, that approach proved challenging to present as a coherent process to OSEP. The TA team helped the state formally document its monitoring processes to ensure consistency in operations across state personnel and over time.

In turn, the state team created its own TA center to share procedural guidance with vendors. This was one part of providing comprehensive support to help vendors understand all facets of the Part C program and the associated requirements. The state created and conducted ongoing quarterly business reviews with vendors:

• To institutionalize the vendor outreach process.
• To foster a common understanding of federal requirements, internal operations, and reporting expectations.

The state's TA focus goes beyond ensuring procedural compliance. It places greater emphasis on supporting vendors in:

• Addressing challenges.
• Improving internal processes to make local determinations and correct non-compliance.

---

Montana

Montana's engagement with the TA Team included: participation in the cross-state DMS Plains Meeting (November 2022) and quarterly DMS learning community calls. Because Montana was in cohort 1 and their DMS visit occurred February to June 2022, they did not benefit from the DMS topic series which was organized around the lessons learned from cohort 1 participants. Montana did receive individualized TA from February to June 2022 related to their DMS visit, and after their visit through January 2024 to improve their systems and address DMS findings.

The Montana team expressed that the TA team helped them address OSEP's feedback, which included assisting them as they developed policies and procedures to strengthen their system in certain areas. During the TA process, the state team participated in the Fiscal Monitoring Learning Community and received help from the TA team to enhance the monitoring process used with their contractors. When contracts with vendors were ending, the state ensured that the new RFP included Part C program elements for vendors to include in their proposed scopes of work. The state also began systematically assessing vendors' invoices to verify that activities and expenses aligned with Part C services.

The TA team assisted them with dispute resolution by reviewing documents and connecting them with someone who could train their officers and mediators on the Part C system. The TA process set them up to continue to identify areas that could be strengthened across the entire system. TA also helped the state team discover gaps in their statewide training offerings and created strategies to address them.

---

Key Takeaways

• TA helped states better understand federal regulations and OSEP protocols related to general supervision systems by providing concrete strategies to identify system weaknesses and revise policies and practices to address real time concerns, modeling continuous quality improvement.
• State teams used the TA structure to develop and improve their own processes when working with vendors and contractors. This helped to strengthen RFPs, track scope of work compliance, and develop local determinations and plans to correct non-compliance.
• State benefits from team collaboration involved using the planning structure and pre-work assignments set by the TA leads to foster organized, more rapid progress when reviewing and identifying needs and strategies for system improvement.
• Partnering cross-state cohort TA with individualized TA proved an effective strategy. Participants have the option to reach out to the TA team and other states for examples of how tasks and procedures are performed in other states or jurisdictions.
• Future DMS 2.0 TA could be strengthened by spending more pre-planning time to determine best practices. For example, states in cohort 2 could share experiences that have proven effective. This could be beneficial in areas where many states are struggling and tested models for improvement are unclear.

---

• 
• 
• 
• 

---

The contents of this document were developed under cooperative agreement #H326P220002 (ECTA), grant #H373F250001 (CIFR), grant #H373Z240001 (DaSy), and cooperative agreement #H326X180002 (CADRE) from the Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. However, the content does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

ECTA Center Project Officer: Julia Martin Eile.

CIFR Project Officer: Charlie Kniseley.

DaSy Center Project Officers: Meredith Miceli and Alexis Lessans.

CADRE Project Officer: Carmen M. Sanchez.

---