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10  ENDREW F. v. DOUGLAS COUNTY SCHOOL DIST. RE–1 

Opinion of the Court 

plicit in the Act.”  Rowley, 458 U. S., at 193, n. 15.  Simi-
larly,  we  find  little  significance  in  the  Court’s  language 
concerning  the  requirement  that  States  provide  instruc-
tion  calculated  to  “confer  some  educational  benefit.”    Id., 
at  200.    The  Court  had  no  need  to  say  anything  more
particular,  since  the  case  before  it  involved a  child  whose 
progress plainly demonstrated that her IEP was designed 
to  deliver  more  than  adequate  educational  benefits.    See 
id., at 202, 209–210.  The Court’s principal concern was to 
correct  what  it  viewed  as  the  surprising  rulings  below:
that  the  IDEA  effectively  empowers  judges  to  elaborate a
federal  common  law  of  public  education,  and  that  a  child 
performing better than most in her class had been denied a 
FAPE.  The Court was not concerned with precisely articu-
lating  a  governing  standard  for  closer  cases.    See  id.,  at 
202.  And  the  statement  that  the  Act  did  not  “guarantee
any particular level of education” simply reflects the unob-
jectionable proposition that the IDEA cannot and does not 
promise  “any  particular  [educational]  outcome.”    Id.,  at 
192  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted).  No  law  could  do 
that—for any child. 

More  important,  the  school  district’s  reading  of  these
isolated  statements  runs  headlong  into  several  points  on 
which  Rowley  is  crystal  clear.    For  instance—just  after
saying that the Act requires instruction that is “sufficient 
to  confer  some  educational  benefit”—we  noted  that  “[t]he
determination of when handicapped children are receiving 
sufficient  educational  benefits  . . .  presents  a  . . .  difficult 
problem.”  Id., at 200, 202 (emphasis added).  And then we 
expressly declined “to establish any one test for determin-
ing  the  adequacy  of  educational  benefits”  under  the  Act. 
Id.,  at  202  (emphasis  added).    It  would  not  have  been 
“difficult”  for  us  to  say  when  educational  benefits  are 
sufficient if we had just said that any educational benefit 
was enough.  And it would have been strange to refuse to
set out a test for the adequacy of educational benefits if we