District Wins: Speech Assessment Was Valid, September 2008 IEP Offered FAPE

What Happened

Student was a fifteen-year-old girl who had been receiving special education services since first grade. At the time of this case, she was eligible under the categories of emotional disturbance and speech-language impairment. In spring 2007, a speech pathologist with 31 years of experience conducted a comprehensive evaluation using multiple standardized tests. The results were severe: Student scored at or below the 5th percentile in nearly every area of receptive and expressive language. A school psychologist also conducted a full psychoeducational assessment that confirmed Student's wide-ranging learning needs, including difficulties with anxiety and somatic complaints that were affecting her school attendance.

By the 2007–2008 school year, Student's school attendance had deteriorated significantly, dropping to under 70 percent. She stopped attending school entirely in April 2008 following a stressful incident at school. Her parents retained a private psychiatrist who recommended home instruction and eventual hospitalization for what he believed was a serious anxiety disorder and, later, a possible bipolar disorder. The district held an IEP meeting on September 16, 2008, just one day before Student was expected to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. At that meeting, the district revised its IEP to offer home-based academic instruction four days a week, speech and language therapy twice a week at a neutral district site, and school-based counseling twice a month. Parents consented only to the home instruction portion and refused the rest. Separately, parents had requested that the district pay for an outside speech and language evaluation. The district refused and filed for due process to defend the validity of its 2007 assessment.

What the ALJ Found

The ALJ ruled in the district's favor on both issues.

On the IEE request, the ALJ found that the 2007 speech and language assessment was thoroughly and properly conducted. The assessor was a licensed speech pathologist with dual training in literacy, used multiple validated assessment tools, observed Student directly, reviewed prior records, and prepared a detailed written report shared with parents at an IEP meeting. The ALJ also found that the parents' summer 2008 email expressing general disagreement with district assessments was not a formal IEE request — the first clear request came in a September 15, 2008 attorney letter, to which the district responded promptly by filing for due process. Because the assessment met all legal requirements, Student was not entitled to a publicly funded independent evaluation.

On the FAPE question, the ALJ found that the September 16, 2008 IEP was reasonably calculated to provide educational benefit given everything the district knew at the time. The IEP was built around the reality that Student was about to be hospitalized for an unknown period, and it included a 30-day review to adjust the plan after discharge. The ALJ rejected parents' argument that all services had to be provided at home, finding that offering speech and language therapy and counseling at a neutral district location — rather than Student's former school — appropriately balanced Student's anxiety with the legal goal of eventually returning her to a less restrictive setting. The ALJ also upheld the reading and social-emotional goals in the IEP, noting that the parents' expert had never shared her assessment results with the district before the IEP meeting, and her testing methods measured different skills than those addressed by the goals.

What Was Ordered

1. The district had no obligation to fund Student's request for an independent speech and language evaluation.
2. Student was found to have been offered a FAPE through the April 25, 2008 IEP as amended on September 16, 2008.
3. All of Student's requests for relief were denied.

Why This Matters for Parents

1. Requesting an IEE requires a clear, explicit request — general disagreement is not enough. The ALJ found that an email expressing general dissatisfaction with district assessments did not trigger the district's obligation to fund an IEE. If you believe a district evaluation was inadequate and want an independent evaluation at public expense, put your request in writing and state clearly that you are requesting an IEE at public expense.

2. A district assessment can be valid even if you disagree with its conclusions. To successfully challenge a district evaluation, you need to show it failed to follow proper procedures — using unvalidated tests, skipping required areas, or being conducted by unqualified personnel. Disagreeing with how results were interpreted is generally not enough to win an IEE.

3. Your own expert's opinions may not count if they were never shared with the IEP team before the meeting. The ALJ gave little weight to the parents' independent evaluator because her report was not provided to the district before the September 2008 IEP. If you have outside assessment data that you want the team to consider, share it with the district in advance of the meeting.

4. A district IEP does not have to give your child the maximum possible benefit — it only needs to be reasonably calculated to provide some educational benefit. Even if a parent can point to a program that might work better, the district's offer is legally sufficient as long as it is designed to meet the student's unique needs and is based on the information available at the time.