Special Education Law Blog: Another Automatic Weekly Question!

Monday, November 11, 2013

Another Automatic Weekly Question!

It's time for the Monday question. How would you change the Rowley FAPE standard if at all? We will later do a post featuring some of your ideas.

1 comment:

AnonymousNovember 12, 2013 at 7:21 AM
I think that Rowley did not do a good enough job defining the "Appropriate" piece. There are too many loopholes and too many parents that think that "I want my child in a private school" is all they need to argue appropriateness. Of course, I over-simplify, and it may be a problem with my district because of the higher-than-the-national-average number of lawyers living in my district, but I feel that my district spends millions of dollars of taxpayer money to defend the "appropriateness" of placements recommended by professionals.

I'm not going to suggest that Rowley is not good enough--there are certainly districts (and individuals within districts, including mine) who will go out of their way to do what is easy and expedient. And you can certainly make the argument that one of the reasons why my district has the wide range of SPED programs is because of the excess of lawsuits: of this, I have no doubt.

But as an educator and a taxpayer in my district, it troubles me on a professional level and on a personal level that so many parents try to game the system into giving them whatever they deem "appropriate" for their child, occasionally even subverting the IEP system by dragging a school district through appeal after appeal until they get their way or the highest court that will hear the case issues its ruling.

I can imagine that I'm probably going to be angering a number of parents by this post--please understand this is not my intention. Most parents I work with are understanding, reasonable, and want to work within the system. And there are some districts that need the challenge. Rowley shows us, if nothing else, that there are districts out there that will attempt to subvert the process and force kids into inappropriate placements. But at the same time, because of the necessary vagueness of the Rowley ruling, some parents have been embolded to challenge the district regardless of its recommendation.

[signed]
Anonymous (because I don't want my employers to decide I'm bad for community relations...)
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