District Denied FAPE by Abandoning RDI Behavior Program for Student with Down Syndrome

What Happened

Student is a 12-year-old boy with Down syndrome and an intellectual disability who attended Spencer Valley Elementary School District, a tiny district with just one school and roughly 40 students. Before enrolling at Spencer Valley, Student had a history of severe behavioral challenges — hitting, biting, and spending up to 90% of his school day outside the classroom. Everything changed when Relationship Development Intervention (RDI), a structured behavioral methodology, was introduced. Under an RDI-trained aide supervised by a certified RDI behaviorist, Student's aggressive behaviors were nearly eliminated. He began reading — something no one thought possible — and made meaningful academic progress across math, writing, and language. When Student enrolled at Spencer Valley in April 2013, the district agreed to continue this approach by contracting with a certified RDI provider and training his one-on-one aide accordingly. The results were equally impressive: by October 2013, Student was thriving in a general education classroom.

Everything unraveled at the end of 2013. The district chose not to renew its contract with the RDI provider and did not replace it with any structured behavioral program. Student's trained aide left, and the substitutes who followed received no training in behavior intervention of any kind — not ABA, not RDI, nothing. From January 2014 onward, Student's behavior deteriorated dramatically. He went from needing 2–3 prompts to transition between tasks to sometimes requiring 12 prompts and up to 87 minutes to redirect. Previously extinguished aggressive behaviors — hitting, pushing, throwing objects at classmates, grabbing a child by the neck — returned in full force. Academic skills that had been emerging reversed course: reading accuracy dropped below 60%, and Student lost all understanding of basic addition and subtraction. His parents, alarmed by the regression and the absence of any qualified behavioral support at the start of the 2014–2015 school year, removed Student from Spencer Valley in September 2014 and placed him privately through The Autism Group, where RDI services resumed and progress returned. They then filed for due process.

What the District Did Wrong

The ALJ found that Spencer Valley denied Student a FAPE in two significant ways. First, the district failed to provide adequate behavioral supports from January through September 2014. For nine months, Student was assigned a revolving series of aides who had no training in any behavior methodology and received no guidance on how to implement Student's behavior plan. The special education teachers assigned to supervise behavioral interventions — while highly qualified in their field — were not behavior specialists and had no training in behavior management methodology. The district's own progress records showed a clear and dramatic regression in Student's behavior and academic achievement during this period, contradicting the district's claim that everything was fine.

Second, the ALJ found that the district denied Student a FAPE specifically by failing to provide an RDI-based behavioral program. While districts generally have the right to choose instructional methodologies, that discretion is not absolute — if a chosen methodology fails and the district ignores the evidence, a denial of FAPE can result. Here, the record showed that ABA-type strategies had historically failed with Student, while RDI had produced meaningful and measurable progress. The district's own data confirmed the regression. When the district's behavioral experts acknowledged that a successful method should be continued if another has failed, they effectively validated Student's position — yet they were unaware of Student's history of failure with ABA and success with RDI, undermining the weight of their opinions.

The ALJ did not find that the district violated parental participation rights at the September 25, 2014 IEP meeting. Spencer Valley listened to the parents' concerns and their expert, then sent a legally adequate prior written notice letter declining the RDI request. Declining a parent's request is not the same as denying meaningful participation. The ALJ also found no material failure to implement the summer 2014 extended school year program — the district's offer actually exceeded what Student's stay-put IEP required in most service areas.

What Was Ordered

1. Spencer Valley shall reimburse Student's parents $13,974.82 for costs of the private placement through January 23, 2015, including: $854.50 for tutoring; $864 for curriculum modification by the designated representative; $313.85 for educational materials; $10,366.25 for The Autism Group's services; and $1,576.22 for transportation to The Autism Group.
2. Spencer Valley shall reimburse the parents for ongoing costs of The Autism Group's services from January 23, 2015, through the date of the decision, upon receipt of proof of payment.
3. Spencer Valley shall reimburse mileage costs for transporting Student to The Autism Group from January 23, 2015, through the date of the decision, calculated at applicable IRS mileage rates.
4. As compensatory education, within 30 days of parents notifying Spencer Valley of their intent to re-enroll Student, the district must provide a one-on-one aide trained in RDI through either The Autism Group or Family Guidance (or another RDI-certified non-public agency), plus behavioral consultation and supervision by an RDI-certified behaviorist from the same agency — for a period of one calendar year.
5. All other relief requested by Student was denied, including prospective reimbursement for future private placement costs and an order permanently amending the IEP to mandate RDI.

Why This Matters for Parents

1. Document what works — and what stops working. This case turned on the district's own progress records, which showed clear regression after RDI was removed. Keep copies of progress reports, behavior logs, and goal benchmarks. If your child was making progress and then stopped, the data may tell the story for you.

2. A district's right to choose methodology has limits. Districts generally get to pick teaching and behavioral methods, but not when the chosen method has a documented history of failure with your specific child and a different method has a documented history of success. If your child's records show that a particular approach worked and its removal caused regression, you have grounds to argue that reverting to a failed approach denies FAPE.

3. Untrained aides can constitute a FAPE denial. Handing a staff member a behavior plan and telling them to implement it — without any training in behavior intervention — is not sufficient. If your child has significant behavioral needs, the IEP should specify the qualifications and training required of support staff, and the district must actually provide that training.

4. Removing a proven private placement mid-hearing can affect your remedies. The ALJ declined to order ongoing reimbursement in part because the parents refused to attend IEP meetings after filing for due process. Even when you are in a dispute with a district, continue engaging in the IEP process — courts and ALJs consider the conduct of both parties when fashioning equitable remedies.