Court Opinion

ID: 9497772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:59:51.52844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:24.832599
License: Public Domain

GREGORY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The district court rightly held that the hearing officer’s findings should not be followed because the hearing officer substituted his own views on education policy— and those of Z.P. and his experts — for the determinations of the local educators charged with formulating an individualized education program (“IEP”). The majority’s opinion unwittingly thwarts the purpose of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (“IDEA”) by supporting the hearing officer’s misapplication of the law. Thus, I respectfully dissent. .
- As the majority notes, Z.P. was diagnosed with autism at age two. He was referred to a School Board child study committee approximately three months after he was' diagnosed. “Prior to comple*312tion of the child study committee evaluations, Z.P.’s parents enrolled him in the Faison School program.” J.A. 3. The School Board child study committee identified Z.P. as developmental^ delayed and determined that he was eligible to receive special education and related services. However, Z.P.’s parents never enrolled him in public school. They rejected the School Board’s IEPs for the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years.
It is undisputed that Z.P. is severely autistic. The School Board asserts that it is prepared to meet Z.P. at his current level,1 as it does with other severely autistic children, and provide him educational benefit. As the majority recognizes, the School Board contends that its program can educate a child who has “no particular skills” and that the teacher in conjunction with “her assistants teach whatever skills are missing.” Ante at 306. However, Z.P.’s parents argue that without one-on-one teacher-child education, Z.P. will receive no educational benefit and will not progress.
After the due process hearing, the hearing officer found: J.A. 12. However, neither the parents’ expert witnesses nor the hearing officer were able to establish in the record that Z.P.’s autism is more severe or significantly different than other children that have received educational benefit at Twin Hickory.
Given the number of other children, the requirement to work independently, the natural distractions at Twin Hickory and [Z.P.’s] lack of communication skills, social behavior, inability to stay on task for more than a few minutes, his fear of other children and his severe propensity to self stimulate and his inability to learn when self stimulating, [Z.P.’s] ability to access the curriculum offered at Twin Hickory would be so impaired as to deny him educational benefit.
According to the hearing officer, Dr. Carlson agreed that the more severe the autism, the more intense the service should be. To address intensity, the School Board offered Z.P. both morning and afternoon instruction.2 Nevertheless, the hearing officer found that this was not enough, stating:
If Dara Butler had only one autistic child to teach she may choose to employ TEACCH3 or the ABA methodology depending on that child’s needs. The child given that level of intense instruction may very well respond to either method. The IEP did not indicate that Z.P. was going to get this type of intense personal supervision and accordingly, given his many problems and defects he would not be able to benefit from the program at Twin Hickory.
J.A. 13. However, what the hearing officer describes would not be using the TEACCH method. The TEACCH method involves a great deal of visual stimulation, considerable work on individual skills, and extensive group instruction. Thus, what the hearing officer was actually concluding was that without one-on-one instruction, like the ABA method primarily used at Faison, Z.P. can not receive educational benefit. His conclusion is a methodological one and the record does not support it. *313There is no evidence in the record that the TEACCH method, as employed by Twin Hickory, does not provide educational benefit to children as severely autistic as Z.P. The hearing officer fails to recognize this fact, but instead bases his decision on the testimony from one of the parents’ experts, Dr. Carlson,4 and his own limited observations. In so doing, he fails to give the appropriate deference required to the School Board witnesses as professional educators.5 See MM v. Sch. Dist., 303 F.3d 523, 533 (4th Cir.2002). In MM, we noted:
We have always been, and we should continue to be, reluctant to second-guess professional educators. As we observed in Tice v. Botetourt County School Board, “once a proeedurally proper IEP has been formulated, a reviewing court should be reluctant indeed to second-guess the judgment of education professionals.” Indeed, we should not “disturb an IEP simply because we disagree with its content,” and we are obliged to “defer to educators’ decisions as long as an IEP provided the child the basic floor of opportunity that access to special education and related services provides.”
MM, at 532 (internal citations omitted).
Further, it is the parents’ burden to prove that the IEP developed by the public school is inappropriate and denies the student a FAPE. Weast v. Schaffer ex rel. Schaffer, 377 F.3d 449, 456 (4th Cir.2004) (holding that “parents who challenge an IEP have the burden of proof in the administrative hearing”). They must prove this against an appropriate amount of deference given to the local educators by the hearing officer. Plaintiffs must also carry that burden in the district court. Bd. of Educ. v. I.S., 325 F.Supp.2d 565 at 578 (D.Md.2004) (“As the party challenging the administrative findings, Plaintiffs bear the burden of proof of establishing a violation of the IDEA.”) (citing Barnett v. Fairfax County Sch. Bd., 927 F.2d 146, 152 (4th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 859, 112 S.Ct. 175, 116 L.Ed.2d 138 (1991)). We also held in Barnett:
Congress chose to leave the section of educational policy and methods where they traditionally have resided — with state and local school officials. In addition, Congress’s goal was to bring handicapped children into the public school system and to provide them with an education tailored to meet their particular needs.... Ultimately, the Act mandates an education for each handicapped child that is responsive to his or her needs, but leaves the substance and the details of that education to state and local school officials.
927 F.2d at 151-152 (emphasis added and citations omitted).
Moreover, the Supreme Court held in Board of Educ. of the Hendrick Hudson Cent. Sch. Dist. v. Rowley:
The primary responsibility for formulating the education to be accorded a handicapped child, and for choosing the educational method most suitable to the child’s needs, was left by the Act to state and local educational agencies in cooperation with the parents or guardian of the child. The Act expressly charges States with the responsibility of “acquiring and disseminating to teachers and administrators of programs for handicapped children significant information derived from educational research, demonstration, and similar projects, and [of] adopt*314ing, where appropriate, promising educational practices and materials.” § 1413(a)(3).
458 U.S. 176, 207, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 (1982).
Because the hearing officer did not give deference to the local educators and did not consider as evidence the School Board’s ability to provide educational benefit to severely autistic children at Twin Hickory, the professional judgment of the local educators was undermined, which is contrary to Congressional intent.6
Further, the hearing officer does not explain why the public school professional educators’ testimonies do not deserve any deference. Even though the majority recognizes that the School Board’s witnesses teach severely autistic children at Twin Hickory, that these professionals have also tested Z.P., and that they have testified that their program is appropriate and will benefit him, the majority still concludes that the hearing officer need not give the professional educators deference or explain why he is dismissing their opinions. Ante at 306-07.
The majority and the hearing officer treat the parents’ experts, who are not local educators, as if they are on par with the School Board’s experts, who are local educators. That is simply not appropriate or consistent with IDEA case law. Hartmann by Hartmann v. Loudoun County Bd. of Educ., 118 F.3d 996, 1000 (4th Cir.1997) (“Absent some statutory infraction, the task of education belongs to the educators who have been charged by society with that critical task.”); Devine v. Indian River County Sch. Bd., 249 F.3d 1289, 1292 (11th Cir.2001) (“[Gjreat deference must be paid to the educators who develop the IEP.”); Wagner v. Bd. of Educ., 340 F.Supp.2d 603, 611 (D.Md.2004) (noting that the “court owes generous deference (as did the ALJ) to the educators on Daniel’s IEP Team”). If the hearing officer is not required to explain how he arrived at his opinion and why he did not give deference to the professional local educators, especially when he finds against the School Board, then the required deference that is due to professional local educators would be meaningless.7 Here, by not affording the School Board the appropriate deference the administrative findings were not made in a regular manner. Thus, they should not be considered prima facie correct and are not entitled to due weight by the district court or this court.
The hearing officer in this case applied the incorrect standard for determining whether the School Board had proposed an appropriate IEP for Z.P. He stated that “[i]t is difficult for this Hearing Officer to *315understand how the less intense program used at Twin Hickory would result in more progress.” J.A. 14. The hearing officer misconstrues what is required of an IEP under the IDEA. The IEP is not required to give more educational progress to a child than his private placement in order to be appropriate. The Supreme Court has said that a student is only entitled to some educational benefit; the benefit need not be maximized to be adequate. See Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 200-01, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 ([T]o require ... the furnishing of every special service necessary to maximize each handicapped child’s potential is ... further than Congress intended to go.”). With this as the IDEA standard and using the proper deference to the public educators, it is difficult to understand how the hearing officer found, based on a preponderance of the evidence standard, that Z.P. was denied a FAPE.
Here, the hearing officer relied on little to no empirical data to support his conclusion that Z.P.’s autism was so severe that he would not benefit from the Twin Hickory program and the IEP the School Board developed. The hearing officer also did not give the appropriate deference to the testimony-of professional local educators like Ms.- Butler,8 the teacher who would have actually taught Z.P. at Twin Hickory, who testified that she had had similarly severely autistic children in her class before and that they had received significant education benefit.
The majority concludes that the district court found that the hearing officer’s opinion was due no deference because he did “not adequately, if at all, consider the testimony of’ Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Blaehman, or Dr. Driver, three of the School Board’s witnesses. 285 F.Supp.2d 701, 706 (E.D.Va.2003). That conclusion misses the mark. In sum, what the district court correctly determined was that the hearing offieers’s opinion was not entitled to presumptive validity because the hearing officer did not make his decision in a regular manner or with evidentiary support because he did hot give the local educators the adequate deference required. For the reasons stated above, I agree. Therefore, I would affirm the decision of the district court.

. The School Board does not dispute that Z.P., if left alone, engages in self-stimulatory behavior and that while stimming he cannot learn.

. The hearing officer infers from the fact that Z.P. was offered services for both sessions that he must be uniquely severely autistic. J.A. at 12. His inference is unsubstantiated.

. TEACCH is an acronym for the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Communication Handicapped Children, which is a Public Health Program developed in North Carolina.

. Dr. Carlson had a limited base of knowledge about the program at Twin Hickory; thus his ability to opine about the educational benefit Z.P. was likely to gain was also limited.

. All of the School Board’s witnesses testified that Z.P. would receive educational benefit at Twin Hickory.

. It is apparent from the transcript of the hearing, that the hearing officer did not think that the School Board’s experience with other severely autistic children was relevant. The hearing officer states, "I don't think that this witness can say or anybody can draw a conclusion that if one student succeeded here or over here that that necessarily means that [Z.P.] is going to succeed anywhere. So I think the whole issue of whether or not other students have succeeded is immaterial.” J.A. 494. This is problematic since Z.P. has only been at Faison, thus Twin Hickory's experience with other similarly severely autistic children is the only, as well as quite compelling, evidence that the School Board has to show that its program can provide educational benefit to Z.P.

. The majority finds that the hearing officer has no duty to “explain in detail its reasons for accepting the testimony of one witness over that of another.” Ante at 306-07. Yet there is considerable authority that due process of law requires that the nonjudicial decision maker — the agency or its hearing officer as distinct from a judge or a jury — "should state the reasons for his determination and indicate the evidence he relied on.” Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 271, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970).

. Ms. Butler is a trained and certified special education educator, with three years experience teaching autistic children. J.A. 218-19.