Jarron Draper V. Atlanta Independent School System Case Study

In the case, Jarron Draper v. Atlanta Independent School System, the school district failed to provide services under the IDEA to Jarron Draper, a student with disabilities. His teachers referred the child for services in second grade. Although he had dyslexia, he was misdiagnosed with mild intellectual disabilities and was placed in a self-contained classroom rather than in a mainstreamed environment. The evaluation remained in place and was not updated every three years as required by law. By the time Jarron reached high school his academic abilities were only at the third grade level. When the school finally reassessed his abilities, they realized that the testing was flawed and that he had low-average intellectual ability. In addition,

The courts found the district in violation of the IDEA and ordered the district to pay full tuition for Jarron at a private school for up to four years with no financial cap. The school district agreed it violated some of Jarron Draper’s rights by providing him at times with poor educational support, however, the school argued that most of the violations were either void due to the statute of limitations or not proven according to school documents. The school system also argued that it is not fair for the student to be educated in the private school sector and that the financial damages were disproportionate to the harm he actually incurred. The plaintiff’s side argued that the school was basing their argument on an expert witness who did not even know Jarron and never met him. In addition, the school district did not follow adequate assessment protocols ( every three years), they continued failed interventions even when Draper showed no improvement and when the school had the chance to help remedy the problem they hired a football coach without adequate training to support

Just as a doctor’s diagnosis has major impact on the patience’s present and future, an academic diagnosis also has significant impact on the child’s life. In Draper, the fact that he was misdiagnosed and placed in a restricted school environment, affected his ability to read, write and perform math as an adult. As a 20 year old, Draper was working as a stockman at Target because he did not have adequate skills to achieve a more successful career or attend college. Whoever is responsible to diagnoses must be adequately trained. Although I am trained to perform reading inventories, I would never attempt to perform a psychological-academic evaluation on a student. Since I work in a private school, we have ISPs not IEPs yet we recommend a handful of skilled professionals to perform these assessments. I am often frustrated when parents do not do adequate research and seek evaluators with limited experience and who provide poorly performed assessments . I would like to create a checklist for parents when they seek out an evaluator. The parents need to know the expertise of the evaluator, seek out references and make sure that the evaluator observes the students in the classroom. The evaluator should seek input from the teachers ( often via a survey or behavior inventory). The evaluator should evaluate all the areas that impact learning ( sight, hearing, etc.) so that