Special Education Law Annual Review 2021

David F. Bateman, PhD, is professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Special Education at Shippensburg University, where he teaches courses on special education law, assessment, and facilitating inclusion. He is a former due process hearing officer for Pennsylvania for over 580 hearings. He uses his knowledge of litigation relating to special education to assist school districts in providing appropriate supports for students with disabilities. His latest area of research has been on the role of principals in special education. He has been a classroom teacher of students with learning disabilities, behavior disorders, intellectual disability, and hearing impairments, and a building administrator for summer programs. Dr. Bateman has recently coauthored the following books: A Principal’s Guide to Special Education, A Teacher’s Guide to Special Education, Charting the Course: Special Education in Charter Schools, and Current Trends and Legal Issues in Special Education.Mitchell L. Yell, PhD, is the Fred and Francis Lester Palmetto Chair in Teacher Education and Professor in Special Education at the University of South Carolina. His professional interests include special education law, positive behavior support, IEP development, and parent involvement in special education. Dr. Yell has published 124 journal articles, 5 textbooks, and 32 book chapters and has conducted numerous workshops on various aspects of special education law, classroom management, and progress monitoring. His textbook, Special Education and the Law, is in its 5th edition. He also serves as a State-level due process review officer in South Carolina. Prior to working in higher education, Dr. Yell was a special education teacher in Minnesota for 16 years.Kevin P. Brady, PhD, is professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is also adjunct associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he teaches a course in school law and ethics in the Summer Principals Academy (SPA). His primary research areas are legal issues in special education, Fourth Amendment issues in schools, and equity issues involving school finance. He is currently the program director of the University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA) Center for the Study of Leadership and the Law. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Education Law Association (ELA) and is on the editorial board of several journals, including Education and Urban Society, Journal of Disability Policy Studies, and West’s Education Law Reporter. His scholarship appears in a wide array of educational leadership, law, and policy journals.

Special Education Law Annual Review 2021, authored by Bateman, Yell, and Brady, provides an incredible summary of major legal requirements for schools serving students with disabilities as well as a primer on dispute resolution and updated policy letters from the U.S. Department of Education. The up-to-date summary of legal cases provides the reader with a trove of real-life cases that can easily have application to individual schools and school districts. Readers can easily find cases that are applicable to their own districts, since this book is organized around specific legislative requirements. This book provides a comprehensive review of circuit and U.S. Courts of Appeals cases dealing with students with disabilities and IDEA and Section 504. It is unlikely that there is another source that provides such detailed and useful information for practitioners and administrators in an easily readable and researchable format.

• Introduction 1 The US Department of Education, the IDEA, and Section 5042 Policy Letters from the US Department of Education2.1 Dear Colleague Letters2.2 Guidance from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)3 A Primer on Dispute Resolution Under the IDEA and Section 504 3.1 Dispute Resolution 3.2 Special Education Disputes in the Federal Court System 3.3 Published and Unpublished Decisions 3.4 Researching Cases Online 4 Topics Covered by US Courts of Appeals in 2021 4.1 504 Implementation 4.2 Attorney’s Fees 4.3 Cause of Action 4.4 Charter Schools 4.5 Child Find 4.6 Coronavirus 4.7 Corporal Punishment 4.8 Deliberate Indifference 4.9 Discrimination 4.10 Eligibility 4.11 Emotional Disturbance 4.12 Evaluation 4.13 Fourth Amendment Rights 4.14 Free Appropriate Public Education 4.15 Frivolous Lawsuit 4.16 Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies 4.17 Harassment 4.18 Homebound 4.19 Identification 4.20 IEP 4.21 Independent Educational Evaluations 4.22 Initial IEP 4.23 IQ Testing 4.24 Judicial Review 4.25 Jurisdiction 4.26 Maintenance of Program 4.27 Masks 4.28 Mootness 4.29 Paraprofessional 4.30 Private School Reimbursement 4.31 Procedural Matters 4.32 Procedural Violations 4.33 Qualified Immunity 4.34 Referral 4.35 Relationship between Conduct and Disability 4.36 Retaliation 4.37 Safety 4.38 Settlement Agreements 4.39 Sexual Assault 4.40 Stay Put 5 Case Summaries by Circuit 5.1 Summary of a Ruling by the US Supreme Court 5.2 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 5.3 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit 5.4 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit 5.5 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 5.6 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit 5.7 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit 5.8 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit 5.9 Summaries of Rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit 6 Case Studies 6.1 How Much Supervision Is Enough? 6.2 Providing Services 6.3 How Much Progress Monitoring? 6.4 How Much Is a Request? 6.5 The IDEA’s “Child Find” Provision: Whose Legal Responsibility Is It? 6.6 Is There a Preference for Mediation-Based Approaches to Special Education Disputes?Glossary of Legal TermsReferencesIndexAbout the Authors