Opinion ID: 3010241
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Factual Background/ Procedural History

Text: J.C.'s IEP stresses personal and self-help goals such as toileting and eating as well as more general communication, domestic, recreation, vocation, and community training skills. His preschool records reflect that he progressed well during his initial years of education. Following J.C.'s placement at OCDTC in 1987, his development slowed. Since 1989, J.C. has made little consistent improvement and in some aspects has even regressed. For example, in 1988 and 1989, J.C.'s teachers, Juanita Jones and Susan Trainor, reported that J.C. could remove his shirt independently. In 1990, Trainor indicated that J.C. could remove his shirt only after it was started for him. By 1992, J.C.'s school records did not reflect any independent disrobing efforts. Trainor related only that J.C. was cooperative and would extend [his] arm/leg for dressing. Likewise, pulling his pants up and down in preparation for toileting has been a self-help goal in J.C.'s IEP since 1989. By February 1991, J.C. was reportedly pulling his pants down with moderate physical assistance on two out of five days. In May 1991, J.C. continued to lower his pants with moderate assistance. In May 1992, J.C. had regressed to where he was able to pull his pants down on two out of five days only with maximum physical assistance. Similar reversion occurred in 4 J.C.'s ability to spear food, to drink from a cup, to communicate, and to pay attention. Not only did J.C. perform poorly on stated IEP goals, but his IEP also failed to include several important objectives. For example, Central Regional's records indicate that J.C.'s self-stimulatory behavior, like chewing his shirt, was a serious problem impairing his educational progress. Despite this fact, J.C.'s IEP contained no strategies to reduce the incidence of this behavior. Another gap in J.C.'s IEP was parent training. According to Trainor, in order for J.C. to make steady progress, his program needed to be consistently implemented both inside and outside of the classroom throughout all his waking hours. Nevertheless, the IEP did not include parent training. Minutes of the March 15, 1990, IEP meeting indicate that the plaintiffs requested someone from the school to come to their home to help with toileting and independent feeding. They were never told that parent training was a related service that could be provided under J.C.'s IEP.

Concerned that J.C. was not receiving a free appropriate education as guaranteed under IDEA, M.C. and G.C. wrote to Central Regional to request that J.C.'s 1992-93 IEP be revised and that he be placed in a residential school. When Central Regional refused to change the IEP, M.C. filed a Petition for Hearing with the New Jersey Department of Education. 5 Following a hearing, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that OCDTC had provided an appropriate education for J.C. To give form to the appropriate education standard, the ALJ applied the Supreme Court's holding in Board of Education v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 200 (1982), that a school district must provide instruction sufficient to confer some educational benefit upon the handicapped child. According to the ALJ, a child with J.C.'s disabilities was not capable of more than very limited and varied progress. As such, the ALJ concluded that J.C.'s slight improvement at times in his ability to prepare himself to toilet, eat with a spoon, and drink from a cup satisfied Rowley's requirement that his schooling provide him some educational benefit. In his view, any residential placement went far beyond J.C.'s educational needs.
M.C. and G.C. appealed the ALJ's decision to federal district court. The court agreed with the ALJ's conclusions that J.C.'s achievements appeared to be de minimis as well as inconsistent and scattered, and that in some areas J.C. had even regressed. However, the court could not determine, based on the evidence presented at the administrative hearing, whether J.C.'s inadequate progress was a reflection of his (lack of) potential or of the inappropriateness of his placement at OCDTC. Accordingly, it convened a hearing to receive supplemental evidence. In the wake of this hearing, the district court reversed the decision of the ALJ and ordered residential 6 placement. The district court concluded that the ALJ had applied the wrong legal standard in reaching his determination. The ALJ had relied on the Rowley formulation that a disabled child need only receive some educational benefit from his instruction. However, according to the district court, the ALJ failed to consider our cases interpreting that decision. See Polk v. Cent. Susquehana Intermediate Unit 16, 853 F.2d 171 (3d Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1030 (1989); Bd. of Educ. v. Diamond, 808 F.2d 987 (3d Cir. 1986). Both Polk and Diamond make clear that an appropriate IEP must result in more than de minimis benefits to satisfy Rowley's some educational benefit standard. As we wrote in Diamond, a plan for a severely handicapped student will satisfy the IDEA only if it is likely to produce progress, not regression or trivial educational advancement. Id. at 991. According to the district court, the limited and varied progress that the ALJ found was de minimis and therefore not sufficient to satisfy IDEA. In determining that residential placement was appropriate for J.C., the court credited the testimony of the plaintiff's expert, Dr. Dana Henning.2 According to Dr. Henning, J.C.'s IEP did not sufficiently address his needs. She testified that J.C. was capable of more than the de minimis results he had realized at OCDTC, but that he needed the intensive, round-the- 2 Dr. Henning has eighteen years of experience in teaching, assessing, evaluating and making educational recommendations for persons with severe or profound handicaps and challenging behaviors. She estimated that she had evaluated close to a thousand severely and profoundly retarded children, one-third of whom had self-stimulatory behavior problems. 7 clock instruction of a residential school to receive meaningful benefit from his education. Central Regional now appeals the residential placement order. We review the district court's legal standard de novo and its factual findings for clear error. The district court denied the plaintiffs' request for compensatory education, and plaintiffs now appeal that determination. At issue is the legal standard used by the court, over which we exercise de novo review.