Opinion ID: 546213
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Substantive Adequacy of the IEPs.

Text: 40 The precepts we have just surveyed frame the inquiry facing the court below: the issue was not whether Concord's program was better or worse than Landmark's in terms of academic results or some other purely scholastic criterion, but whether Concord's program, taking into account the totality of Matthew's special needs, struck an adequate and appropriate balance on the maximum benefit/least restrictive fulcrum. On this issue, the record sustains the district court's affirmative conclusion. 41 In the first place, the district court was bound to give due weight to the agency's judgment. See Rowley, 458 U.S. at 207. Second, the court obviously agreed with the BSEA hearing officers that Matthew required not only academic help but also socialization training and motor skills assistance. Having canvassed the evidence presented by Matthew's teacher, his parents, and the treating professionals, we cannot say that such a conclusion constituted clear error. As a matter of maximizing Matthew's educational benefit, those special needs were properly considered by the IEP team, notwithstanding the parents' rather singleminded focus on academic results. See Hudson v. Wilson, 828 F.2d 1059, 1063 (4th Cir.1987); see also Mass.Gen.L. ch. 71B, Sec. 2. The IEP ensured socialization therapy with a psychologist and occupational therapy to improve Matthew's motor skills. Landmark's regimen provided no motor skills training and no specific program of socialization therapy. It follows that Concord could lawfully implement an educational plan which it reasonably considered more appropriate and well-rounded than the Landmark program, especially when its IEP explicitly provided for more, and better diversified, related services keyed to Matthew's specific handicaps. See, e.g., Wilson v. Marana Unified School Dist., 735 F.2d 1178, 1182-83 (9th Cir.1984). 42 Additionally, appellants' imprecations all but ignore the mainstreaming requirement. Defendants' 1986-87 IEP proposed a non-residential day program in public school. The plan called for Matthew to be taught in both self-contained classrooms (i.e., with other handicapped students) and in regular classrooms, thus allowing increased mainstreaming in classes like social studies and science where he had attained an acceptable level of performance. In contrast, as a residential school catering to a learning-disabled clientele, Landmark posed a much more restrictive environment and afforded decreased prospects for mainstreaming. 43 Last but not least, there was considerable room for the BSEA, and the district court, to find that the advantages inherent in the IEP did not severely compromise educational benefits. Concord's teacher-student ratio was within the range recommended by two professionals who were treating Matthew (Drs. Cushna and Kinsbourne). Its faculty, by many measures, was more experienced and better credentialed than Landmark's. Matthew's progress from 1984 to 1986--a period which had been spent, for the most part, in the Concord public schools--was described by Dr. Cushna as most astonishing. Although the evidence showed that peer interaction remained a persistent problem, Matthew had been making good academic progress and was gaining self-confidence during the interval immediately before his parents unilaterally changed his placement. 44 In light of the evidence of Matthew's specific needs and the differences, plus and minus, between the IEP, on the one hand, and the Landmark program, on the second hand, there was substantial proof from which the state agency could rationally conclude that the IEP was adequate and appropriate. Mindful of this evidence, and the weight to be accorded agency determinations in cases under the Act, we cannot say that the district court erred in striking the balance of factors in favor of the BSEA's resolution of the question presented. Where the evidence permits two plausible views of adequacy/appropriateness, the agency's choice between them cannot lightly be disturbed. 45 To this point, we have discussed the 1986-87 IEP to the virtual exclusion of the 1987-88 IEP. Yet, what we have written about the former applies full bore to the latter. Because the parents insisted that Concord not reevaluate Matthew, the 1987-88 IEP was drafted along the same lines as the 1986-87 plan. It reflected a mixture of self-contained and heterogeneous classes, speech/language training, and occupational therapy. The 1987-88 IEP also included a substantial after-school socialization component designed to bring Matthew into contact with both handicapped and non-handicapped children. One new feature was a specific allotment of time to an academic tutorial program. The alternative--Landmark's program--remained substantially unchanged. For the same reasons as pertained in the previous year, the BSEA permissibly determined Concord's 1987-88 IEP to be appropriate and substantively adequate. The lower court's ratification of that finding was not clearly wrong. 46