Emma C. v. Thurmond

Background

The case proceeds in four phases to determine whether the California Department of Education complies with its monitoring and enforcement duties under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Phase 2 concerns the state’s methods for selecting school districts and other local educational agencies for intervention. In a prior related proceeding, the court found that the state had not shown compliance in several areas: mediation practices, methods for selecting districts for further monitoring, preschool performance, and the absence of any system for reviewing small educational agencies.

The state revised its systems and presented them at hearings held in June and July 2020. The court found that the state had adequately addressed the earlier problems, except for the broader targets used to measure district compliance. Review of those targets was postponed after the federal government postponed its own target-submission deadline. The court separately considered the state’s proposed child-find target.

Mediation monitoring

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires school districts to establish mediation procedures for disputes with parents about special-education services, and federal regulations require states to monitor districts’ mediation practices. The state proposed four filters for selecting districts for assistance. The filters identify districts that bypass mediation or show other indications of limited mediation use, while removing districts that filed at least one mediation-only request during the year.

The plaintiffs objected to the fourth filter, arguing that a district could file one mediation request each year to avoid review. The court noted that the plaintiffs offered no evidence-based reason to believe districts would manipulate the process this way. The monitor argued that the state’s proposed targeted technical assistance was not itself monitoring. The court rejected that objection, explaining that the filtering system reviews information from every district to determine which districts need intervention. The court held that the state’s mediation-monitoring system and its process for selecting districts for intervention were legally adequate.

Intensive monitoring

The state replaced its prior method for selecting districts for intensive monitoring, which had systematically selected better-performing districts while missing worse-performing districts. Under the new method, each district receives scores on six performance indicators for kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade schools and four indicators for preschools. The state combines those scores, ranks the districts, and selects the bottom 10 percent for intensive monitoring.

The court held that this was a rational method that allowed the state to satisfy its federal obligations. The court also declined to find the state’s method unlawful because many preschools lacked outcome data. Although the monitor proposed excluding preschool outcome data, the court found that reasonable people could debate which method was better and that the state’s proposed method was legally adequate.

Small educational agencies

The state must monitor all entities responsible for educating students with disabilities, including small local educational agencies. The court explained that small agencies create statistical difficulties because performance percentages based on very small numbers of students may be unreliable. The state proposed two legally adequate options for assessing small agencies and selecting them for intervention.

Under the primary randomized-grouping option, the state would randomly place small agencies into groups, compare the groups using methods applied to larger districts, and select poorly performing groups for further review. It would then use secondary standards to select particular agencies within those groups for intensive or targeted monitoring. The court called this a reasonable starting point and found that any current flaws would not significantly undermine monitoring.

Under the alternative cyclical-monitoring option, the state would review each small agency over a three-year cycle. The court found this alternative legally adequate as described, while noting that the details of the review process would be examined in Phase 3, which focuses on the effectiveness of monitoring and enforcement activities.

The court also stated that its ruling addressed the general methods for monitoring small agencies, not the percentage of those agencies the state should select or the intensity of any intervention.

Child find

“Child find” is the requirement that school districts identify, locate, and evaluate children with disabilities, including children who are homeless or attend private schools. The state measures child find partly by examining the percentage of students in a district who are identified as having disabilities.

The court found the state’s new target for large districts legally adequate. The new target uses 1.5 standard deviations from the California average and produces a 7.23 percent cutoff, which the court described as a substantial improvement over the prior 3.6 percent cutoff.

For small agencies using the randomized-grouping method, an agency would receive targeted child-find monitoring only if both its own rate and its group’s overall rate were below 7.23 percent. The court acknowledged that this approach was somewhat arbitrary but held that, considering the state’s resource limits, it remained within the range of reasonable options. The court also declined to require a different definition of small agencies for child-find purposes.

Ruling and next steps

The court concluded that the state had successfully passed Phase 2, subject to review of the new compliance targets that it would adopt in the coming year. The court said the parties would discuss whether to move to Phase 3 during the upcoming academic year or instead work on the new targets and remaining Phase 1 issues while waiting for the state’s Phase 3 activities to return closer to normal after the pandemic. The order was dated July 16, 2020, and signed by United States District Judge Vince Chhabria.