Flawed Triennial Assessment Leads to Improper Special Ed Exit for Student with Dyslexia

What Happened

Student was an 11-year-old girl who had qualified for special education under the category of specific learning disability since 2014. During the 2016–2017 school year, Parents and the district had repeated disagreements about services — Parents did not want Student pulled out of class for specialized academic instruction and requested approaches like Orton-Gillingham, which the district declined to offer as a specific program. Student met most of her IEP goals that year and was passing fourth grade, though she continued to struggle with reading fluency, spelling, and writing.

In fall 2017, the district conducted a triennial (three-year) reassessment to determine whether Student still qualified for special education. At the November 2, 2017 IEP team meeting, the school psychologist presented her findings and concluded Student no longer qualified. Parents immediately disagreed, believing the data was analyzed incorrectly. After the district filed for due process to defend its assessment, Parents — not ready for a hearing at that time — reluctantly consented to Student being exited from special education in January 2018. Student's grades declined noticeably in the second semester of fifth grade, and she ultimately failed to meet grade-level standards in reading and writing. Parents hired an independent evaluator, Dr. Perlman, who found Student had deficits consistent with dyslexia and recommended special education. Parents then privately enrolled Student at NewBridge Nonpublic School and sought reimbursement.

What the District Did Wrong

The ALJ found that the district's triennial assessment did not meet legal requirements in two critical ways. First, the staff member who administered the academic achievement test (the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement) was not adequately trained and did not follow the test's rules — she kept asking questions past the stopping point ("ceiling"), which resulted in a significantly inflated score on the phonological processing subtest. The correct score should have been 84 (below average), but was recorded as 97 (average). This error was not corrected until June 2018, months after the district had already exited Student from special education based on the wrong score.

Second, the school psychologist used a software tool to analyze Student's scores for a pattern of strengths and weaknesses — but she told the IEP team she had entered all scores into the program when she had not. She quietly removed Student's lowest scores, calling them "outliers," and also used a stricter statistical threshold than district policy required, making it less likely the program would identify a learning disability. The ALJ found her explanations for these choices unpersuasive and her testimony evasive.

Beyond the flawed assessment itself, the IEP team never had a real discussion about eligibility. The school psychologist presented her conclusion that Student didn't qualify, and no other team member — not the teachers, not the speech-language pathologist, not the program specialist — offered any input about Student's struggles in class with reading, spelling, or copying from the board. The ALJ found that the school psychologist effectively made the eligibility determination alone, which is not how the law works: eligibility is a team decision.

What Was Ordered

1. The district must reimburse Parents $6,500 for Dr. Perlman's independent educational evaluation within 45 calendar days.
2. The district must reimburse Parents $6,850 for the NewBridge summer session tuition, initial tuition deposit, and first month of the 2018–2019 school year.
3. The district must reimburse Parents for daily mileage (94 miles round trip at the IRS standard rate) for days Student actually attended NewBridge through September 14, 2018.
4. All other requests for relief — including reimbursement for vision therapy, auditory processing evaluation, educational therapy from Big Springs, and ongoing NewBridge tuition beyond September 14, 2018 — were denied.

Why This Matters for Parents

1. A flawed assessment can invalidate an exit from special education. If the district's testing was not administered correctly — including following the test manufacturer's rules about when to stop — the results may not be legally valid. Parents have the right to challenge how tests were given, not just what scores were reported.

2. The IEP team, not the assessor alone, must decide eligibility. The law requires the full IEP team to weigh all available information when determining whether a student qualifies for special education. If teachers, service providers, and other team members are silent during that discussion — especially about struggles they've observed in the classroom — the process may be legally deficient.

3. Parents who refuse district reassessment can lose their right to reimbursement. The ALJ cut off tuition reimbursement at the point when Parents declined to consent to a new assessment plan and refused to attend an IEP team meeting. Even when a district has done something wrong, parents are expected to cooperate with reasonable offers to fix it. Refusing those offers can limit or eliminate financial remedies.

4. Independent evaluations can be reimbursed when a district's assessment is flawed — but costs may be limited. The ALJ awarded the standard market rate for the independent evaluation ($6,500), not the discounted rate Dr. Perlman charged, but also excluded portions of his work that amounted to expert witness preparation. Parents should document all costs and understand that not every expense related to an outside evaluation will be covered.