Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1: Supreme Court Rejects 10th Circuit's More Than De Minimis IEP Benefits Interpretation

Whether a child has been integrated fully into a classroom setting or not, the Supreme Court has recently determined that a child under an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) required under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 (IDEA) must receive a education that is tailored to a child’s unique needs and seeks to enable the child to make educational progress appropriate in light of the child’s particular circumstances. The Court's opinion in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1, 580 U.S. __ (2017), clarifies  an earlier decision by the High Court in Board of Ed. of Hendrick Hudson Central School Dist., Westchester Cty. v. Rowley,  458 U. S. 176 (1982), held that an IEP need only be "reasonably calculated to enable the child to receive educational benefits." This Rowley standard lent itself to a great deal of uncertainty as evidenced by the earlier decision, where the 10th Circuits held that the Rowley standard, when applied to a child not integrated fully in a classroom, could be satisfied by a demonstration of merely more than de minimis educational progress. See Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1, 798 F. 3d 1329, 1336 (CA10 2015). Vacating and remanding the 10th Circuit's decision, the Supreme Court emphasized that while the IDEA cannot promise any particular educational outcome, it must nevertheless enable the child to achieve a higher educational outcome that is appropriate to the child's particular life circumstances. Concretely, this means that a disabled child under an IEP who is integrated in a classroom should be equipped to progress through the curriculum just like other children in the classroom. For a child who is not able to be integrated into the classroom, the child's IEP need not aim for grade-level advancement but must nonetheless provide an  educational program must "appropriately ambitious in light of [the child's] circumstances, just as advancement from grade to grade is appropriately ambitious for most children in the regular classroom. The goals may differ, but every child should have the chance to meet challenging objectives."