## Facts

- Jarron Draper attended the Atlanta Independent School System (AISS) beginning in second grade and struggled academically, especially in reading.
- AISS evaluated Draper and misidentified him as having a mild intellectual disability, placing him in classes for students with intellectual disabilities rather than addressing a specific learning disability.
- AISS failed to timely reevaluate Draper for years, prolonging the incorrect classification and inappropriate programming.
- A later reevaluation identified specific learning disabilities, including dyslexia, but subsequent IEP programming did not result in meaningful progress.
- By age 18, while in 11th grade, Draper read at approximately a third-grade level.
- Draper filed an IDEA due-process complaint alleging denial of a free appropriate public education (FAPE).
- An administrative law judge found extensive, long-term IDEA violations, awarded compensatory education, and allowed a private-school option with a tuition cap.
- The federal district court adopted the administrative findings and expanded the remedy, ordering AISS to fund private-school placement and related services until Draper earned a high school diploma or turned 22.
- AISS appealed, challenging timeliness, factual support for violations, the availability of private placement, and the size of the award.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court abused its discretion under the IDEA by ordering private-school placement and related services as compensatory education for a prolonged denial of FAPE.
2. Whether AISS’s IDEA violations could be treated as a continuing course of conduct rather than limited to a narrow period by the statute of limitations.
3. Whether IDEA’s least restrictive environment preference or an asserted preference for public placement barred private-school placement as a compensatory remedy.
4. Whether the scope of compensatory education ordered was disproportionate to the violations found.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment.
- The court held the district court acted within the IDEA’s broad equitable remedial authority in awarding compensatory education in the form of private-school placement with tuition and related services.
- The court rejected AISS’s effort to confine the violations and remedy to a minimal period, concluding the record supported a broader course of denial of FAPE.
- The court held that IDEA does not categorically bar private placement as compensatory education when public programming has failed to provide meaningful educational benefit.
- The court upheld the duration and magnitude of relief (through diploma or age 22) as justified by the severity and length of educational deprivation.

## Legal Principles

- IDEA requires provision of FAPE through an IEP reasonably calculated to confer educational benefit.
- Federal courts have broad equitable discretion to fashion IDEA remedies, including compensatory education designed to place the student in the position the student would have occupied absent the denial of FAPE.
- Compensatory education is remedial rather than punitive and may include private-school placement and related services when necessary to address past educational deprivation.
- Least restrictive environment principles do not prohibit private-school placement as a compensatory remedy where the public system has not delivered meaningful benefit.
- A district court may consider a school system’s extended pattern of misidentification, failure to reevaluate, and ineffective services when determining the scope of compensatory relief.

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit upheld an expanded compensatory education award requiring AISS to fund Draper’s private-school placement and services through graduation or age 22, holding that the remedy fell within the IDEA’s broad equitable authority in light of AISS’s prolonged denial of FAPE.


Draper v. Atlanta Indep. Sch. Sys., 518 F.3d 1275 (11th Cir. 2008)