Opinion ID: 1320911
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Under-identification of LEP Students

Text: The district court also determined that school districts are likely under-identifying LEP students. LULAC IV, 572 F.Supp.2d at 767-68. TEA is tasked with establishing criteria for identification, assessment, and classification of LEP students. TEX. EDUC.CODE § 29.056(a). Once a student is identified as LEP, the district must obtain parental consent for the child to take part in an LEP program. Id. However, parents may, and sometimes do, deny consent. At trial, intervenors presented evidence that, while the state average of parental denials is 4.9%, some districts have reported a significantly higher percentage of denials. [16] Based on this evidence, the trial court determined that those districts must be under-identifying LEP students, and this under-identification decreases the perceived achievement gap between LEP and non-LEP students. LULAC IV, 572 F.Supp.2d at 767-68. We find that the district court reached this conclusion in error. The district court based its conclusion on the belief that a parental denial altered the identification of the student, so that the child is no longer characterized as LEP. Id. at 767-68. This conclusion is entirely incorrectonce students are identified as LEP, they remain identified as such until they obtain English proficiency, regardless of participation in the program. Thus, the district court abused its discretion in determining that the PBMAS data was unreliable due to the under-identification of LEP students. 3. Aggregation of Data The district court also took issue with the PBMAS monitoring system's aggregation of data at the district level. [17] Id. at 768. The district court held that this comparative method prevents intervention on individual campuses that are not performing as well as the district overall. In reaching this conclusion, the court relied upon a study which showed that 277 schools, attended by a total of 54,963 LEP students, performed at a performance level lower than the stage of intervention required by the district's assigned performance level. [18] However, this study did not ascertain the total number of campuses in need of intervention or the total number of campuses subject to intervention based on the district-wide data. Thus, it did not provide what percentage of campuses in need of intervention or subject to intervention these 277 campuses actually represented. Rather than questioning the significance of the report, the trial court perfunctorily concluded that aggregation of data at the district level rendered the PBMAS monitoring system ineffective. Further, the trial court determined that it would be more reasonable for TEA to analyze data at the campus level to avoid this masking effect. [19] This conclusion ignores the allocation of shared responsibilities within the Texas education system. Under Texas's system, local districts are primarily responsible for implementing LEP programs, and addressing and remedying under-performing campuses within their own district. On the other hand, TEA is responsible for intervening in failing districts to ensure overall compliance. [20] There is no finding nor sufficient evidence that individual districts are ignoring LEP under-performance on individual campuses or sufficient evidence of resulting actual harm to such campuses and their students. We accordingly find that the district court abused its discretion in supplanting defendants' policy choice with its own preferred method of comparison. [21] On remand, the district court should reconsider the evidence, in light of this court's opinion, to properly determine whether PBMAS, coupled with other sources of information (such as NCLB), is capable of effectively monitoring the success of LEP programs and whether any such monitoring deficiencies of defendants (together with any others so found) amount to a failure to take appropriate action under Section 1703(f) which caused a denial of the rights of Mexican-American LEP students thereunder.