U.S. Supreme Court Rules Parents Can Get Public Funding for Private Schools Even if They Didn't Get Public Special Education First

Parents in the U.S. who are battling with their public schools for special education services recently got a helping hand from the U.S. Supreme Court, which said that they may be able to get reimbursement for private school tuition.

In the case before the Supreme Court, the parents of a boy who had been struggling for years sought help from the school.  Although a school psychologist did some testing and interviewed the student, the psychologist determined that the student didn’t qualify for special education services and that no additional testing was needed. When the student’s struggles intensified, his parents got a private assessment which showed that the student had ADHD and other learning disabilities.  On the advice of their private consultant, they placed their child in a private school for the remainder of high school.  A trial court later found that the public school’s assessment was inadequate because it failed to address ADHD, which was suspected.

Although it’s well established that reimbursement is available for private school tuition when the public school has failed to provide a “free appropriate public education” as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it was unclear whether reimbursement was a possibility when the student had not previously been receiving public special education services.  The Supreme Court ruled that the school’s refusal to provide an individual education plan (IEP) was even more egregious than providing an inadequate IEP and that it is within a trial court’s discretion to order that the parents be reimbursed for private school tuition.

Here’s the text of the Supreme Court decision if you want to read it.

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