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"Evaluation" under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is among the major responsibilities of school psychologists. This concluding article in the series on evaluation under the IDEA provides legal analysis and professional recommendations related to procedural appropriateness. Specifically, it addresses notices, record keeping and reports, selection of test instruments, observations, and specialized evaluations.

The confusing variations of terminology that connect "home" with instruction warrant special care in relation to students with disabilities. The underlying core of these varying terms amounts to three distinct placement options in relation to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), here identified as homebound instruction, instruction in the home, and homeschooling. Homebound instruction and homeschooling are initially a matter of state law, whereas instruction in the home is entirely a matter of the IDEA. This article summarizes the state and case laws and presents three successive parts for disentangling these variations: (1) an illustrative case scenario; (2) an explanation of each of the three distinct placement options; and (3) practice recommendations for professional for special education leaders.

Although varying among and within the states, the percentage of students with 504 plans is steadily and significantly increasing as a national average. Although the professional literature addresses the legal standards for eligibility for 504 plans, it has not provided up-to-date information to practitioners as to the legal standard for the appropriateness of 504 plans. The prevailing substantive standard for Free and Appropriate Public Education under § 504 is reasonable accommodation, which is different from the corresponding substantive standard for IEPs under the IDEA. This article summarizes the case law basis for this § 504 standard and provides recommendations for the formulation of 504 plans and the closely related steps before and after the formulation stage

Representing a sequel to a similar case law snapshot in mid-2010, this article provides an updated overview of the judicial and administrative case law concerning students with traumatic and nontraumatic brain injury in the P-12 school context. The scope is limited to cases under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the pair of disability-based civil rights statutes, Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The cases include not only hearing/review officer and court decisions but also state education agency and Office for Civil Rights complaint investigation reports available in the national legal database, LRP's SpecialEdConnection®. The analysis focuses on the frequency and outcomes of these published rulings, with the discussion extending to the empirical limitations and professional implications of the findings.

This article delineates the four successive dimensions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) central obligation of "free appropriation public education" that the courts have developed thus far: (a) procedural, (b) substantive, (c) incomplete implementation of the last Individualized Education Program (IEP), and (d) incomplete implementation of the next IEP. This current snapshot cites illustrative cases and, to the extent available, empirical analyses. The final recommendation warns against lowering practice and policies to the minimum legal standards for each of these four "faces," instead using them as organizing counter-markers for a proactive professional orientation.

For this 23rd article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is the substantive standard for free appropriate public education (FAPE) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), with a focus on the classification of specific learning disability (SLD) and with the overlay of a claim under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. This case is illustrative of the interactions between eligibility and FAPE, IDEA and Section 504, and legal and professional perspectives.

This article summarizes the applicable judicial analysis for cases in which special education personnel claim that their employing district retaliated against them for advocacy on behalf of students with disabilities. Providing examples of recent relevant court decisions, it traces the applicable essential elements and likely outcomes for such claims under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the secondary alternative legal bases of First Amendment freedom of expression and state whistle blower laws. The concluding discussion provides the practical implications for special educators, including the role of professional ethics.

The special education literature has included a continuing line of articles and chapters that have translated for practitioners the legal meaning of the progress monitoring provisions in the successive versions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This article examines this line of publications in light of the language of the applicable statutory framework and the parallel line of judicial rulings specific to progress monitoring under the IDEA. These judicial rulings, which are the centerpiece of this analysis and which span the period from 1990 to 2021, form a continuous and consistent pattern that is severely discrepant with the characterization in the publications to date. For example, in these progress-monitoring rulings, the courts have applied the relatively relaxed analyses of either the procedural or implementation -- not the substantive -- category of the IDEA's "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) obligation. Similarly, rather than treating progress monitoring as an "absolutely essential" priority for IEPs based on objective measures and high frequency, the vast majority of the rulings have been in favor of districts despite evidence of progress monitoring provisions that are either entirely absent in the IEP or do not meet such rigorous standards. Consequently, based on overlapping criteria of completeness, accuracy, and transparency, the conclusion is that the legal quality of these special education publications warrants improvement to be commensurate with their impressive level of legal quantity. The suggested improvements include not only clear differentiation between, but also a solid foundation for, legal requirements and professional recommendations. Their purpose is not just monitoring but achieving meaningful progress in the legal literacy and professional practice in educating students with disabilities.

The peer-reviewed special education literature has included notable attention to the peer-reviewed research (PRR) provision that the 2004 amendments added to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). However, as with the other IDEA issues, the legal accuracy of this translating treatment for special education professionals is subject to serious question and significant improvement. As an initial framework, this article provides (1) a comprehensive canvassing of the IDEA legislation, regulations, and, on a supplemental basis, agency policy interpretations specific to PRR; and (2) a sequential summary of the professional literature's translation of the IDEA's PRR provision in light of the available applicable case law. It next synthesizes a systematic and objective analysis of the successive judicial rulings that have interpreted and applied the PRR provision. The final part revisits the coverage in the special education literature, evaluating the completeness, accuracy, and transparency of its legal content. This reexamination identifies and discusses the significant discrepancy between the objective contours of the case law and its characterization in the literature, with recommendations for more accurate legal literacy for special education professors and practitioners.

Although reading remains a priority in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the basis of the case law primarily is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) due in significant part to its open adjudicative avenue. The purpose of this article is to provide a synthesis of the judicial rulings under the IDEA specific to reading methodologies. The various branded and unbranded versions of the Orton-Gillingham approach for reading instruction continued to be an active area of litigation for students with various disabilities, including but not at all limited to those with a diagnosis of dyslexia. The pronounced skew in the judicial outcomes in favor of defendant districts has not had a notable chilling effect on the frequency of these cases. This article provides an overview of early case law (1975-2005), subsequent case law (2006-2020), and most recent case law.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grants dissatisfied parents of students with disabilities the right to pursue legal remedies. In 2007, Rose and Zirkel found that parents of students with reading disabilities seeking Orton-Gillingham (OG) instruction under the IDEA's central obligation for a free appropriate public education (FAPE) were largely unsuccessful in their complaints. Since that review, various factors had the potential to influence the frequency and outcomes of OG-related case law--namely, the peer-reviewed research requirement of the IDEA and growing awareness of the need for specialized reading instruction. Our updated analysis of OG-related case law revealed an increase in the number of cases but similar district-favored outcomes identified by Rose and Zirkel. In particular, the relaxed substantive FAPE standard and deference to local and state authorities diminished the likelihood of parents prevailing in their requests. Implications for parents, school district personnel, special education professionals, and education researchers are presented.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) continues to account for an expansive and expensive segment of education litigation. The most longstanding remedy under the IDEA is tuition reimbursement, interpreted broadly to include not only private school tuition, but also related transportation and stand-alone related services. Probably because it represents such a high-stakes risk to both parents and school districts, this remedy accounts for: (a) three Supreme Court cases, which is more than that for the central obligation of a free appropriate public education (FAPE); and (b) specialized provisions in the IDEA. More specifically, the Supreme Court established the general multistep framework in "School Committee of Burlington v. Department of Education of Massachusetts" (1985) and "Florence County School District Four v. Carter" (1993); Congress then added codified refinements in the 1997 amendments of the IDEA; and, more recently, the Supreme Court interpreted part of this codified language in "Forest Grove School District v. T.A." (2009). Finally, a continuing multitude of lower court decisions have filled the gaps with varying further interpretations. Rather than summarizing each of these successive sources of law, this article provides a systematic synthesis of the applicable adjudicative steps in the form of a yes-no checklist. Each step starts with a question followed by a relatively concise explanation, along with a few lower court rulings that illustrate its prevailing or varying applications.

Since schools have generally resumed full in-person services, the legal issues for students with disabilities include not only the continuing line of cases challenging the level and efficacy of services during the pandemic but also the potential disputes about implementation or nonimplementation of "compensatory services" per federal and state education agency (SEA) guidance. These potential disputes may arise in (a) the adjudicative avenue under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504, which includes due process hearings, and in the investigative avenues of the state complaint process under the IDEA and (b) the corresponding complaint process of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR; Zirkel & McGuire, 2010). Possessed with legal currency about this guidance, the related case law, and the relevant questions, school psychologists can facilitate careful institutional consideration of locally prudent and effective actions. This consideration needs to include the relationship, between the guidance's use of compensatory services (CS) and the remedy in the IDEA's adjudicative and investigative avenues of compensatory education or services (CE).

Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is one of the low-incidence physical disabilities that the literature has not addressed in relation to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and its case law applications. To help fill the gap, this relatively brief article provides (a) an introduction of PWS from legal sources; (b) an overview of the IDEA, including its primary components and alternate decisional avenues; (c) a synthesis of the case law to date, which amounts to a limited variety of administrative and judicial decisions; and (d) a brief set of conclusions from an impartial legal perspective.

The purpose of this article is to provide special educators with significant and perhaps surprising recent lessons in special education law. These lessons under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act range from the threshold issues of child find and eligibility through the central obligation of free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environments to specialized issues, such as discipline and the statute of limitations. The conclusion emphasizes that legal requirements in special education are often not absolute and constitute a bottom boundary, different from the generally advisable guiding norm of best practice.

This article provides an up-to-date and comprehensive canvassing of the judicial case law concerning the responses to students with concussions in the public school context. The two categories of court decisions are (a) those concerning continued participation in interscholastic athletics, referred to under the rubric of "return to play" and (b) those concerning the legal obligations in facilitating the continued educational progress of the student, referred to under the rubric of "return to school." The case law in the first category primarily addresses state common law claims of negligence and federal constitutional claims under the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause. The court decisions in the second category primarily address the successive issues of child find, eligibility, and "free appropriate public education" (including but not necessarily limited to accommodations) under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The outcomes of the court decisions thus far have been largely in favor of the district defendants, but the case law is far from crystallized and complete.

For this 22nd article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is child find and eligibility under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including as a secondary matter the intersecting requirement for a comprehensive evaluation. The case highlighted in the article is illustrative of the multiplicity of factual circumstances and professional diagnoses for the three overlapping threshold issues under the IDEA.

This article provides a current, comprehensive, and concise overview of the law specific to students with dyslexia in K-12 schools. It consists of (a) an overview of the applicable legal framework, which includes the federal foundation in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, (b) a compact tabulation of the state dyslexia laws that fits within this overall framework, and (c) a summary of a representative sample of court decisions specific to the identification of and interventions for students with dyslexia. The discussion identifies the legal lessons of the applicable state laws and court decisions within the overall limitations of law and suggests illustrative areas for follow-up research.

Teachers and parents often find special education law complex and confusing. As one step for a basic foundation in special education law, a previous "TEACHING Exceptional Children" article (Zirkel, 2005) provided a snapshot of the "top five case concepts" based on 10 decisions from the Supreme Court. Each of these decisions interpreted either (a) the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 2017) or (b) the overlapping pair of civil rights acts prohibiting disability discrimination: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (2017) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA; 2017). In light of the considerable developments under the IDEA and Section 504 and the ADA in the preK-12 context in the intervening 15 years, this update extends the coverage and addresses the 10 core concepts based on not only the cumulative Supreme Court decisions but also the 2004 IDEA amendments and, to a lesser extent, the 2006 IDEA regulations and lower court case law. These 10 core concepts start with the practical sequence of IDEA issues from child find and eligibility to remedies for prevailing parents and end with the overlapping coverage of Section 504 and the ADA and the relevant specialized steps of the adjudicative process.

This article presents a tool for systematic consideration of the accuracy of the legal contents of publications in special education. The tool is a two-dimensional grid with one axis having three overall levels relative to legal requirements and the other axis having the three perspectives symbolized by the courtroom roles of pro-parent, impartial, and pro-district representatives. The purpose is to facilitate authors' self-reflecting awareness and readers' assessment of the legal accuracy of special education publications, including careful consideration of the interrelated issue of transparency. Finally, this tool is intended as the starting, rather than ending, point of such systematic reflection, including the addition of other significant dimensions, such as legal expertise, for ultimate improvement of the legal literacy of professionals and parents in special education.

This next article in the series on evaluation under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) focuses on the common, core responsibility of school psychologists for timely completion of the initial evaluation. For this topic, first is a legal analysis and then a discussion for professional implementation that includes ethical considerations and practical recommendations.

Restraints and other aversives continue to be an active area of legal activity, particularly for students with disabilities. The March/April 2016 issue of Communiqué provided an update of the case law specific to school district use of restraints (Zirkel, 2016). Since then, various sources have provided successive snapshots of state restraint and seclusion laws (e.g., Butler, 2019; Ober, 2018; Rafa, 2018). Similarly providing continuing coverage, the U.S. Department of Education (2016, 2019) has issued additional policy statements specific to this legal issue. However, the coverage of the more recent case law has not been comparably comprehensive and current. The purpose of this article is to provide an update of the relevant court decisions for the most recent 4-year period ending on September 16, 2019. The methodology was the same as the previous analysis, including exclusion of cases where the restraint did not play a role in the court's rulings. The findings of this latest analysis are closely consistent with those for the previous 4-year period, thus reinforcing the interpretive observations in the earlier Communiqué article (Zirkel, 2016), including that in most of the cases the challenged district conduct included but was not limited to restraints. Overall, the frequency of cases and the successively smaller units of decisions, claim category rulings, and claim rulings are almost identical with the corresponding results in the predecessor analysis. The bottom line is that such systematic information, along with basic legal literacy, should facilitate the pivotal position of school psychologists in helping the stakeholders, including parents, students, teachers, and school administrators, participate in prudent policies with regard to restraints and related practices. Rather than a knee-jerk reaction or black-or-white resolution, the use of restraints and other aversive procedures merits carefully conceived state and local policies, with appropriate training and accountability for implementation with fidelity.

Suicide rates among teenagers have increased significantly in recent years. The professional literature for public school personnel has been increasingly extensive. Yet, the corresponding coverage of liability case law regarding student suicide has been far from systematic and objective. An article in a legal periodical, written by Zirkel and Fossey (2005), reported the rulings for eighteen court decisions from 1991 until early 2005 concerning student suicide in the K-12 context. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of the frequency and outcome trends of the student suicide cases for the subsequent 14-year period from early 2005, when the predecessor article's coverage ended, until early 2019. Per the method of the predecessor article, the pool of potentially pertinent cases resulted from a Boolean search of the Westlaw database of court decisions, using various combinations of "suicide," "school," and "student." The selection criteria remained the same as the earlier analysis, with two minor refinements. First, the exclusions extended from not only decisions in the private school context and attempted suicides but also decisions limited to threshold adjudicative issues, such as whether the plaintiff-parents had to exhaust available administrative remedies before proceeding to court or consequences other than monetary liability, such as employee discipline. Second and subject to less clear boundary lines, the exclusions also extended to suicide cases in which the legal claims appeared to be limited to bullying and those in which the student's death may have been accidental. The aforementioned search and selection process resulted in 44 cases containing 79 rulings. The findings of this update continue and confirm the frequency and outcomes trend of the earlier analysis of liability case law specific to student suicide (Fossey and Zirkel 2005). These findings are in clear contrast to the scarce and skewed coverage in the professional literature in school psychology and related fields. Contrary to the previous literature and prevailing perception, legal liability in the wake of student suicide is not a primary concern. The outcome odds for plaintiffs are low against school districts and--based on the deeper pockets of the district and the lesser legal bases applicable to individual defendants--negligible for school psychologists or other district employees.

This brief article addresses the question of whether the Individuals with Disabilities Act or Section 504 and its sister statute, the Americans with Disabilities Act, provides for the liability of special educators and other public school personnel for money damages. The analysis synthesizes the applicable case law under these federal disability laws not only directly but also in connection with the added avenue of liability under Section 1983, and discusses the practical implications of the almost entirely "No" answer to this focal question.

A comprehensive search of the Westlaw case database for the period January 1, 2008 to August 31, 2018 identified 22 court decisions that contained federal civil rights claim rulings specific to the actions of school resource officers in response to the conduct of students with disabilities. Both the quantitative and qualitative results revealed (a) a disproportionately high incidence of such court decisions among a larger sampling of 79 court decisions with such civil rights claims for public school students in general; (b) a wide variety of predominantly behavior-related disabilities, such as autism and emotional disturbance; (c) a notable number of cases in which the school resource officer's actions were questionable in terms of disproportionately excessive force in relation to conduct that was often disability-connected and not substantially dangerous to self or others; and (d) rather gross and defendant-skewed judicial rulings. The recommendations were primarily for professional proactivity that includes but extends beyond reform of legal requirements.

After dropping steadily from 2000-2001 to 2013-2014, the percentage of students identified under the IDEA classification of specific learning disabilities (SLD) levelled off and increased slightly until the latest data available (2017-2018; NCES, 2019). Despite the recognition in the IDEA amendments of 2004 of response to intervention (RTI) as having a permissive or mandatory role in state laws for identification of SLD, a lengthening line of empirical analyses of the case law revealed a continued reliance on either severe discrepancy or, more frequently, the need for special education. These analyses also found a rather stable pronounced outcome trend in favor of school district determinations of noneligibility. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the most recent 3.5 years of case law to determine the current pattern in relation to previous trends. The specific questions were the same as in the most recent previous analysis: (1) Has the frequency of case law, including the limited but leading position of California, and the shift toward court, in contrast with hearing/review officer, decisions continued?; (2) Has the trend of district-friendly outcomes changed?; and (3) Has RTI emerged as a major decisional factor in the recent cases? [For the previous analysis "The Legal Meaning of Special Education Eligibility: The Latest Case Law," see EJ1177622.]

This article provide an analysis of the relevant court decisions from the end of 2016 to the end of 2019 specific to the IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] child find obligation. Questions investigated concerned trends with regard to frequency, distribution, and outcomes as well as whether particular factors (such as response to intervention) or cases emerged during this period that seemed significant in shaping the evolving contours of these two components of the judicial case law.

Seclusion, used broadly to include time-out (Bon & Zirkel, 2014), and other aversives, such as restraint, continues to be an active area of legal activity, particularly for students with disabilities. The September 2016 issue of "Communiqué" provided an update of the case law specific to school district use of seclusion (Zirkel, 2016) (EJ1200678). This 3-year update identified 24 pertinent court cases. For more user-friendly summarization, the analysis changed the previously more fine-grained claim rulings into three broad categories: (1) constitutional, such as Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process (SDP); (2) federal legislation, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) or, more commonly in this specific context, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (§ 504); and (3) state law, such as negligence or assault/battery. The overall outcomes distribution of these broad "claim category rulings" was: conclusively for the plaintiff -- 0%; inconclusive -- 51%; and conclusively for the defendant -- 49%. Upon conflation using the aforementioned best-for-plaintiff basis, the outcomes distribution using cases as the unit of analysis expanded the inconclusive category to 63%.

The purposes of evaluation, as shown in its definition in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) regulations (2019, § 300.15), concern eligibility and free appropriate public education (FAPE). For the initial evaluation, the focus of the IDEA legislation is to determine whether the child is eligible and, if so, the nature and extent of the child's needs as the foundation for FAPE (§ 1414[a][a][C]). For reevaluation, the focus is to determine whether the child continues to be eligible and whether there have been any changes in the child's individual foundational needs (§ 1414[c][1][B]). ame coverage. The purpose of this relatively brief, exploratory, and practice-oriented analysis presented in this article, is to examine the focus and other primary features of the federal appeals court rulings to date that are specific to the "all areas" evaluation obligation. The reasons for the choice of federal appellate case law are that these decisions: (1) amount to a manageable critical mass; (2) have high precedential weight (albeit to a more limited extent for those that are not officially published); and (3) cover broad multistate regions. However, they represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg as compared to the lower court decisions, hearing and review officer decisions, and settlements that extend down to the murky subsurface level (e.g., Zirkel & Machin, 2012).

The professional literature is largely lacking with regard to current information about state systems for complaint procedures (CP) as compared with the much more common knowledge of the due process hearing mechanism of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This article begins with an overview of the professional literature, including prior research, concerning CP. The subsequent sections sequentially summarize the method, findings, and discussion of the authors' survey of state education agency (SEA) CP systems. Overall, almost two thirds (63%) of CP filings nationwide resulted in a decision letter, and a similar majority (62%) of these letters found violations, which suggests that districts should focus on not only more effective compliance but also early resolution. More than half (56%) of CP investigators have an educational background in special education and about a quarter (26%) have an educational background in law, which may result in a gap in the needed skill sets for effective investigation and decision writing. Training most often is in the form of attendance at a national-level conference (75%) or various forms of in-house training (61%), but respondents acknowledged the need for improved professional development, especially training tailored to the needs of CP investigators. The most common practices among CP systems are: (1) the use of a template for CP decisions; (2) the authoring of CP decisions by the investigator; and (3) supervisory review of CP decisions by a supervisor, although additional responses suggested the need for broader systemic efficiencies, such as more user-friendly information and alternative dispute resolution. The relatively infrequent and thus wider disuniformity of other practices--namely, (1) the use of a two-part test for procedural issues, (2) the resolution of substantive issues, and (3) provision of a mechanism for appealing CP decisions--poses problems for school districts that warrant policy consideration at the national, state, and local levels.

Starting with a constructive critique of legal articles in special education journals concerning transition services under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), this article presents an empirical analysis of relevant judicial rulings for the period 1990-2016 that shows a prevailing prodistrict approach that is not otherwise evident in the prior articles. The findings include an increased frequency of these judicial rulings generally in accord with the trajectory of special education litigation and, more significantly, an approximate 3:1 district-parent ratio in the outcomes of these rulings that, with up-and-down variation, prevails for the entire period. The conclusion is that the time is ripe for an elevated substantive standard for law-based articles in special education journals as well as a continued, but differentiated, rigorous normative standard for transition services.

This article provides a systematic and impartial analysis of the law, including hearing and review officer as well as judicial decisions, specific to the intersection of response to intervention (RTI) and school districts' ongoing affirmative obligation of child find. The results reveal that this intersection has not been the subject of particularly frequent adjudication and that the majority of the rulings have been in favor of school districts. At a more nuanced level, however, the analysis suggests that the outcomes of such litigation depend on various factors, including the effective implementation of RTI with overriding attention to the two defining dimensions of child find--reasonable suspicion of eligibility and reasonable period for evaluation. Finally, the applicable legislation, regulations, and case law thus far is relatively limited in the scope and specificity of its prescriptive requirements, leaving ample latitude for prudent professional discretion.

The legal dimension of response to intervention (RTI) has been the subject of considerable professional confusion. This brief article addresses the issue in three parts. The first part provides an update of a previous iteration that compared 12 common conceptions, referred to here as the "lore," with an objective synthesis of the applicable primary sources of law. Due to the relative paucity of case law to date, this synthesis includes various policy interpretations of the United States. The second part consists of a summary of the results of the polling of professionals who attended a recent series of regional RTI conferences. The third part provides a discussion of these results, including the limitations of the items and the polls, the implications for practitioners, and recommendations for further research.

After an introductory legal framework based on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, this article canvasses the court decisions concerning liability for disclosures of confidential information about students with disabilities. The relatively few court decisions illustrate the wide variety of disclosures, including (a) those to the media, other students, and private providers; (b) the range of federal and state bases, such as Section 1983 civil rights claims based on the constitutional right to privacy; and (c) the judicial outcomes of these claims, which have been strongly skewed in favor of the school side, especially for the institutional rather than individual defendants. Yet, other compelling interests, including the need for educational environment that values human dignity and psychological safety, merit higher consideration in terms of prudent professional policies and practices.

Although numerous studies have investigated autism methodology case law, few studies have investigated case law regarding reading methodology, particularly the Orton-Gillingham approach, for students with reading disabilities. We provide the results of a systematic case analysis of all published Orton-Gillingham decisions from the original passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) through 2005. Results indicate that in the past 30 years, hearing/review officers and courts reviewed 64 Orton-Gillingham cases, with 77% occurring within the last 10 years. Unlike autism methodology cases, districts have won an overwhelming majority (75%). Although inconclusive, the addition of the terms "peer-reviewed research" and "scientifically based research" in the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA may benefit parents in Orton-Gillingham methodology disputes, thus leading to increased litigation. This article concludes with recommendations for reversing the upward trend in the number of Orton-Gillingham reading methodology disputes.

This study provides an analysis of case law concerning applied behavior analysis (ABA) for students with autism to determine outcome-related factors. The authors classified the 68 pertinent hearing/review officer and court decisions published in EHLR ("Education for Handicapped Law Report") and IDELR ("Individuals with Disabilities Education Law Report") into 2 groups representing the central issues of contention between parents and districts -- program selection (e.g., instructional approach) and program implementation (e.g., its location, duration, or frequency). For both groups, the outcomes, in terms of who won, did not favor either parents or districts. The three factors predominantly associated with wins by either party for both groups of decisions were testimony of witnesses, documentation of progress, and Individualized Education Program elements.

This study provided a quantitative analysis of a random sample of 167 National Disability Law Reporter-published letters of findings by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in response to higher education student complaints under Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Inasmuch as each letter of findings contained, on average, two issues, a total of 346 issue rulings were the basis of the analysis. The number of these rulings per year was lower during the last five years of the 1990-98 period of the study. The outcome of the rulings favored the institutions of higher education, over the student complainants by a 2:1 ratio; however, the ratio in favor of institutions was lower for letters of findings as a whole because each letter covered approximately two issues. Type of the disability and type of the issue were significant outcome-related factors. More specifically, the success rate was significantly higher for students with mobility or hearing impairments and for complaints regarding general institutional requirements and facilities accessibility than for students with other disability or issue categories. (Contains 2 tables.)

As the follow-up to an earlier examination of the frequency and outcomes trends of published court decisions under the IDEA for P-12 students, this updated analysis covers the 25-year period ending on December 31, 2022. The frequency trend for the most recent 10 years reversed the upward trajectory of the previous 15 years. The outcomes trend for the most recent 10 years continued the approximate 2:1 ratio in favor of school districts for the completely conclusive rulings, with variance among the 5-year intervals and the intermediate outcome categories, such as inconclusive rulings. For the 25-year period, the frequency of the decisions was highest in Second Circuit region (Connecticut, New York, and Vermont) and lowest in the Tenth Circuit (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming). The corresponding outcomes for the entire period was most district-favorable in the Eighth Circuit (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Dakota) and Fifth Circuit (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) regions, and the least district-skewed in the D.C. and Sixth Circuit (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee) regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For this 18th article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is the IDEA's obligation of providing a comprehensive initial evaluation. More specifically, the focus here is determining eligibility for a gifted child with emotional and attendance problems.

A persistent problem in the professional literature in school psychology and related fields, such as special education, is the insufficient treatment of legal issues in terms of not only quantity (e.g., Zaheer & Zirkel, 2014) but also quality (e.g., Zirkel, 2014). The quality dimension is illustrated in the coverage of the Supreme Court's recent major decision under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)--"Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" (2017). The limited number of articles to date in the school psychology literature concerning "Endrew F." illustrate these overlapping quality concerns: (1) inaccurate synthesis of the Court's decision; (2) lack of sufficient differentiation between objective legal requirements and professional recommendations or advocacy; and (3) attribution to the Court of lessons that are neither addressed nor directly implied in its decision. This short treatment addresses these three quality concerns in four successive parts. The first part of this article provides a concise and objective synthesis of "Endrew F." The second part critiques two illustrative articles in the school psychology literature. The third part provides additional examples from related fields, including special education. The final part offers a few tentative recommendations.

For this 17th article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, the topic is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) central obligation, free appropriate public education (FAPE). More specifically, the focus here is procedural and substantive standards for FAPE in the context of tuition reimbursement.

As a trusted link between district personnel, students, and their families, school psychologists often have questions about whether their communications are privileged like those of other professionals. In some jurisdictions, state statutes and common, or case, law recognize privileged communications for certain specified paired roles, including clergy-penitents, attorney-clients, and physician-patients. However does privileged communication also include the student-psychologist paired role. This article provides a current snapshot of the states with applicable statutes or case law.

Depending on their experience, local special education directors may be familiar with the complaint procedures (CP) avenue that the IDEA requires each state education agency (SEA) to provide. Yet most special education professors and many parents of students with disabilities have negligible knowledge about this avenue of decisional dispute resolution under the IDEA, especially compared with the other alternative--the hearing officer (HO) route. One of the reasons for this lack of knowledge is the limited attention to the CP avenue in the special education literature. For example, many of the texts in special education law do not mention, much less explain, the CP process (e.g., Osborne & Russo, 2016; Weber, Mawdsley, & Redfield, 2013), and others accord it tertiary attention in comparison to the HO process (e.g., Guernsey & Clare, 2008; Yell, 2016). The purpose of this article is to provide an empirical analysis of the CP system in comparison to the HO system with regard to the issue categories, outcomes, and remedies in their respective written decisions. The data are from five of the most active states, and the comparison is not only between these two systems for the total sample but also among the five state subsamples.