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ERIC Number: EJ1425974
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Jun
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0164-775X
EISSN: N/A
Child Find under the IDEA: The Latest Judicial Case Law
Perry A. Zirkel
Communique, v52 n8 p22-24 2024
The term "child find" refers to a district's ongoing obligation to evaluate upon reason to suspect a child may meet IDEA eligibility standards. This obligation consists of two components: a reasonable suspicion of eligibility and initiating the evaluation within a reasonable period of time. Because child find is a procedural matter, it requires not only: (1) a violation of one or both of these components but also; (2) a resulting substantive loss to the child or parents. To establish reasonable suspicion, the key question is whether school district officials "overlooked clear signs of [eligibility] and were negligent in failing to order testing, or that there was no rational justification for not deciding to evaluate" (e.g., Board of Education of Fayette County v. L.M., 2007, p. 313). For the reasonable period component, prior court decisions established a range of approximately 1-3 months, depending on the circumstances of the case (Zirkel, 2015a). Previous issues of "Communiqué" provided successive snapshots of the lengthening line of court decisions specific to the IDEA child find obligation (see Zirkel, 2017, 2020). This update for the latest 4-year period (2020-2023) uses the same method to determine whether the previously reported trends have continued or changed, including exclusion of marginal or overlapping cases, such as those ultimately focusing on the evaluation (e.g., P.B. v. Thorp School District, 2021).
National Association of School Psychologists. 4340 East West Highway Suite 402, Bethesda, MD 20814. Tel: 301-657-0270; Fax: 301-657-0275; e-mail: publications@naspweb.org; Web site: http://www.nasponline.org/publications/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A