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Back in 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped
Children Act, which was later renewed and changed to the Individuals
with Disabilities
Education Act (or IDEA). The federal government in today’s case,
Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, wants the Court to
clarify what Congress
has meant since it set these policies since 1975, and specifically the
concept of “free appropriate public education” for disabled children
at public schools.
The case is about the following question: “What is the level of
educational benefit that school districts must confer on children with
disabilities to
provide them with the free appropriate public education guaranteed by
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?”
A 15-year-old Littleton, Colo., student, identified only as Endrew F.
(his parents call him “Drew”), is challenging a federal appeals court
ruling. The
youth is autistic and has attention deficit disorder, compromising his
verbal and non-verbal communications skills.
When his parents and school officials couldn’t agree on an
individualized educational plan (or IEP) for him in public schools,
Drew was placed in a private
school that specializes in teaching autistic students. The family
then sued to recover the private school tuition, contending that the
school district
was obliged to pay because it failed to provide Drew with an adequate
educational opportunity.
A trial judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
denied the challenge, finding that the law only required a benefit
level just above trivial,
and that Drew had received better than that level in public school.
The Court first addressed these questions in 1992 in the case of
Board of Education v. Rowley,
where it provided a partial definition of the word “appropriate” but
refused to make it more specific. Since then, the Court hasn’t
returned to the issue
until today.
In the Rowley decision, the court said that public schools didn’t have
to maximize the learning potential of children with disabilities,
because Congress
didn’t indicate a requirement of “strict equality of opportunity or
services” in the public school setting. But, it said, each disabled
child’s educational
plan must be “reasonably calculated to enable the child to receive
educational benefits.”
The Court also didn’t establish a test for what would be appropriate
in each given child’s situation. “The courts must be careful to avoid
imposing their
view of preferable educational methods upon the States. Once a court
determines that the Act’s requirements have been met, questions of
methodology are
for resolution by the States,” said Justice William Rehnquist in the
majority opinion.
Since 1992, the lower federal courts have reached widely varying
interpretations of appropriate standards of achievement.
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