Wasting a bright mind, a typical casualty of reading failure

The story of Jarron Draper is, unfortunately, is the all too typical fate of the majority of learning disabled students here in San Francisco and all across the country. The exceptional part of Jarron's story is that he got legal help and his family fought back. Most families don't fight back. They hand over blind faith to the school staff and are led down the path of low expectations. Low expectation's lead to dropping out, juvenile crime and poverty.

*Draper entered the School System as a seven-year-old child in the second grade in 1994. He could not read, was writing at a kindergarten level, and did not know the sounds of the alphabet. Draper's teachers recommended that Draper be tested to determine the cause of his academic struggles in February 1995, November 1996, February 1997, and October 1997.  But it never happened. 

The School System finally performed an evaluation of Draper on June 1, 1998, and concluded that he had an intelligence quotient of 63. This evaluation was flawed because it failed to assess Draper for a specific learning disability even though he displayed signs of dyslexia, such as writing letters, numbers, and words backwards. Draper was 11 years old. On January 25, 1999, Draper was placed in the most restrictive educational environment available, a self-contained classroom for children with mild intellectual disabilities. The restrictive classroom provided Draper with a functional curriculum that would not lead to a regular high school diploma. Draper's team met on April 19, 2000, and determined that he was reading at a third-grade level and spelling at a first-grade level. Draper was 13 years old. Draper remained in the restrictive classroom through the school year of 2002-03. His placement in the restrictive classroom between 1999 and 2003 was based on the 1998 evaluation.

Draper was not reevaluated until April 2003, when he was in the ninth grade and 16 years old. Under the Act, Draper should have been reevaluated by June 2001. 20 U.S.C. § 1414(a)(2)(B)(ii). After completing the evaluation, the school psychologist recommended further testing because discrepancies in subtest scores suggested that the evaluation did not accurately reflect Draper's intellectual potential. The School System reevaluated Draper in July 2003. This evaluation revealed that Draper did not have mild intellectual disabilities but had a specific learning disability. The evaluation established that a full-scale intelligence quotient of 82, which is in the low-average range of intelligence, more accurately reflected Draper's intelligence.

The evaluation also established that Draper was still reading at a third-grade level, performing at a third-grade level in arithmetic, and performing at a second-grade level in spelling. His reading level had not improved since April 2000. Draper's team met several times throughout the summer and failed to modify his educational program. Draper's family made it clear to the School System that Draper wanted to receive a regular high school diploma so that he could go to college. On August 3, 2003, Draper's family requested private schooling and one-on-one tutoring to help Draper close the achievement gap in his studies.

No action was taken on these requests. On September 9, 2003, the School System modified Draper's diagnosis from mild intellectual disabilities to specific learning disability. Draper's team recommended only 1.5 hours of speech tutoring a week. On October 7, 2003, Draper's team amended the educational program to provide Draper with 19.5 hours of general education and 10.5 hours of special education a week. The School System placed Draper in regular-education classes for the first time since third grade even though a witness for the School System testified that a fifth-grade or sixth-grade reading level is required to survive academically in high school. Draper's educational program provided that he would use the Lexia program, an instructional computer program, to improve his ability to read, but Draper was not provided the Lexia program.

On November 17, 2003, the School System agreed, after mediation, to provide Draper with the Lexia program by no later than November 21, 2003. Despite the agreement, the School System did not implement the Lexia program until December 9, 2003, and, by January 12, 2004, Draper had received only 2.5 hours of instruction with the Lexia program. On May 24, 2004, Draper was privately evaluated by the Lindamood-Bell reading program. The Lindamood-Bell Center recommended that Draper receive intensive sensory-cognitive training at a rate of 6 hours daily for a total of 360 hours. On May 26, 2004, although the School System was aware that Draper was still reading at a third grade level, Draper's team decided that he would use the Lexia program for the summer. Draper's family requested private reading services but were informed that they would have to file a formal complaint to pursue the matter.

During the summer of 2004, the School System referred Draper to Dr. Judy Wolman for an independent psychological evaluation. The evaluation established that Draper's skills in several areas were severely discrepant from his potential. Dr. Wolman concluded that Draper suffered from a specific learning disability consistent with dyslexia and recommended "intensive multi-sensory training" to remedy his academic deficits. Despite Draper's family's objections that the Lexia program was inadequate to address Draper's needs, Draper's team decided on November 18, 2004, to continue the use of the Lexia program. When Draper's team met again on May 12, 2005, Draper had failed his language-arts class and was failing the second semester of algebra. On September 10, 2004, the Georgia Department of Education acknowledged that Draper's grades had not improved.

The Department informed Draper's family that they could request a hearing if they were not satisfied with Draper's educational program.

The hearing was conducted by the administrative law judge in November 2005. By then, Draper was 18 years old and in the eleventh grade. The family requested a hearing. The administrative law judge found that the School System failed to provide Draper an adequate education for the school years of 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05. The administrative law judge found that, after the School System misdiagnosed Draper in 1998, the School System failed to reevaluate him, in violation of the Act.

The administrative law judge concluded that the use of an educational program that did not increase Draper's reading ability after three years failed to satisfy the Act. The administrative law judge awarded Draper a choice of two remedial options.

The first option provided Draper with substantial additional support services in the School System. The School System would have been required to provide Draper with intensive multi-sensory reading services for 60 minutes a day, five days a week; train all of Draper's teachers in dyslexia instructional strategies; provide Draper with a one-on-one, certified, special-education teacher to support him in all his classes; provide one hour a day of tutorial services; provide services during the summer; and, during the first year, evaluate Draper's progress monthly.

The second option allowed Draper to be placed in a private school and required the School System to pay his tuition, not to exceed $15,000 a year. These services were available until June 2009 or when Draper received a high school diploma, whichever came first. But the schools district wouldn't let it go. They wanted to be "right" at the expense of this young man. They used the taxpayers dollars to appeal to US district court in spite of the fact that cases about reading failure rarely win for schools. There are hundreds of thousands of Jarron Drapers, they are 20% of the student population.  Schools socially promote them them away year after year. Lots just drop out.  How likely are these "new grownups" going to be financially self sufficient as IDEA2004 requires?