The purposes of evaluation, as shown in its definition in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) regulations (2019, § 300.15), concern eligibility and free appropriate public education (FAPE). For the initial evaluation, the focus of the IDEA legislation is to determine whether the child is eligible and, if so, the nature and extent of the child's needs as the foundation for FAPE (§ 1414[a][a][C]). For reevaluation, the focus is to determine whether the child continues to be eligible and whether there have been any changes in the child's individual foundational needs (§ 1414[c][1][B]). ame coverage. The purpose of this relatively brief, exploratory, and practice-oriented analysis presented in this article, is to examine the focus and other primary features of the federal appeals court rulings to date that are specific to the "all areas" evaluation obligation. The reasons for the choice of federal appellate case law are that these decisions: (1) amount to a manageable critical mass; (2) have high precedential weight (albeit to a more limited extent for those that are not officially published); and (3) cover broad multistate regions. However, they represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg as compared to the lower court decisions, hearing and review officer decisions, and settlements that extend down to the murky subsurface level (e.g., Zirkel & Machin, 2012).