The IDEA contains several provisions that protect children with disabilities when they face exclusion or removal from school. In this session, we will discuss the recent guidance from the Office of Special Education Programs in interpreting these provisions, and the different ways student disciplinary issues can come before an Impartial Hearing Officer. We will cover procedural safeguards under 20 U.S.C. § 1415 and how they interact with the Child Find requirement under Section 1412. We will also examine the IDEA’s standards for assessing whether a student’s behavior was a manifestation of the child’s disability; and the evidentiary issues to consider when hearing an expedited appeal under Section 1415.

This session will show the various remedial options available to hearing officers under the IDEA; review the analytical approaches for the two primary remedies – tuition reimbursement and compensatory education; and encourage more affirmative exercise of this broad equitable authority, including purely prospective orders for procedural violations that do not result in cognizable harm to the child or parents.

Credibility determinations are at the heart of adjudication. Yet, not only is there no stable definition of credibility in the law, but courts and agencies diverge at the most basic definitional level in their use of the category. Still, the law maintains a fiction that credibility is a functional legal construct that advances the truth-seeking project of the legal system. This talk will discuss different ways that legal actors commonly conceptualize credibility and the factors that judges have traditionally used to assess it. It will suggest that some of the inputs we accept under the credibility label cannot be reconciled with the project of assessing a witness’s truthfulness, but instead that these inputs are a source of bias in the system. In this way, credibility can become a signifier of how worthy a witness seems of being believed rather than of the witness’s truthfulness itself.

Last year’s introduction of this panel session was well received and Judge Clark’s practical and entertaining approach to answering questions was a highlight. Judge Clark will take the lead this year in facilitating a discussion with a distinguished panel of IDEA national consultants, ALJs, and SEA folks. Our experienced panelists will share what they’ve learned during the course of their judicial careers, what has worked and not worked, as well share other insights on how to do our jobs better. There will also be time for anything-due-process questions.

This session will discuss the obligation of school districts to educate children with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. The session will begin with a brief review of the statutory background and fundamental cases, then go into recent caselaw and ongoing controversies. The session will discuss the current disagreement among courts as to whether mainstreamed settings are appropriate when the student can make sufficient progress on the student’s IEP goals in such a setting but cannot keep up with the mainstream class curriculum even with additional aids. It will also take up remedies for failure to educate in the least restrictive environment.