Last week, COPAA filed an amicus brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in A.H., V.B. and N.B. v. New York City Department of Education. The brief urges the court to reverse the decision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a case involving appropriate services (Applied Behavior Analysis, ABA) in a student’s IEP.  You can read the amicus brief here.

COPAA Amicus Committee Co-chairs Ellen M. Saideman, Catherine Merino Reisman and COPAA Legal Director Selene Almazan wrote the brief.

The issue before the Hearing Officer (IHO) and the State Review Officer (SRO) was whether or not student, N.B., required a specific methodology in order to make meaningful progress commensurate with his abilities, namely the provision of ABA. The administrative decisions, finding that N.B. did not require one-on-one ABA were neither well-reasoned nor supported by the record. An evaluation of the appropriateness of an IEP offer must take into account the appropriateness of a school district’s offer of methodology given the information available to the IEP team at the time of the meeting. Because it failed to consider the offer in light of the information available at the time of the meeting, the district court’s handling of the issue was incomplete and erroneous.

COPAA urged the Court to reverse the findings by the district court.