When someone goes to get an IEE it is for two reasons. First you are hoping to convince the school district that your child needs more services than they say your child needs. Sometimes this works, but often what happens is your IEE needs to stand up in due process because many districts would prefer to hire attorneys than give your child the services your child needs. So that IEE better be pretty good.
You want a person who understands the particular area, who understands schools and what they cover as opposed to an evaluator who is working under a medical model and is used to writing evaluations for insurance companies. They are very different. Even if they can do an evaluation under your insurance, you want to make sure they have experience in with educational reports, and then you want to be sure that they will attend an IEP meeting and be able to defend their report or your child will not get the needed services. You can pay for that, or ask that your district covers part of the IEE but I wouldn't tell them which part. I have found the district is unlikely to work this sort of thing out with us though, so it may or may not work, even if the person who takes insurance, who is covered by your insurance, is good at educational evaluations.
The best IEEs include arguments from the start that your child needs this intervention that will stand up in court, even if you don't have to go to court, which hopefully we don't have to do. I have found that most of the medical people we have used for treatment have not been able to even say if my daughter is getting appropriate services at the school, even though they know very well what to do under the medical model. It isn't their fault, they are just not trained in the educational model.
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