Image Credit: Clarksville-Montgomery County School System / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Earlier this month, an appellate court affirmed a previous ruling that found that the Clarksville Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) had failed to provide a former student with an appropriate education, allowing him to graduate with an inability to read or even write his name.
According to the ruling, “William A. is dyslexic and graduated from high school with a 3.4 grade-point average. Yet even then he could not read. The school now challenges an order that it provide him with compensatory education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We affirm the order.”
The parents of the student, referred to as “William A.” in the lawsuit, brought the suit against CMCSS in 2023, near the end of William’s junior year of high school. They stated that the school system had failed to provide their son with a free appropriate public education (FAPE) as guaranteed through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Instead, they were forced to hire a private tutor who specialized in helping students with dyslexia in order to help William make progress.
In June 2023, Judge Phillip Hilliard determined that CMCSS did not provide William with an appropriate education and awarded him “888 hours of compensatory education in the form of 5 sessions per week, at 1 hour per session, of Dyslexia tutoring from a reading interventionist trained to provide Dyslexia tutoring through the Wilson Reading and Language System.”
CMCSS appealed that decision, asking that it be reversed.
The lawsuit noted that the school system did provide an individualized education plan (IEP) for William A., but his parents expressed concern about what was being provided to him because he showed no improvement in his reading skills throughout his middle and high school education. Those concerns were noted in the IEP by the school, but the school opted not to make the requested changes.
Ultimately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided against CMCSS, ruling that the school system did not provide the student with a FAPE, as his IEP did not address his specific learning challenges.
“Apart from his dyslexia itself, William’s most salient ‘circumstance’ for our purposes was that—with proper instruction—he can learn to read. See L.H., 900 F.3d at 795-96. The school has not even tried to prove that finding wrong; yet William graduated from high school without being able to read or even to spell his own name,” the ruling stated.
The court also noted that the school system allowed the student to rely on AI software to complete his assignments.
“To write a paper, for example—as the ALJ described—William would first dictate his topic into a document using speech-to-text software. He then would paste the written words into an AI software like ChatGPT. Next, the AI software would generate a paper on that topic, which William would paste back into his own document. Finally, William would run that paper through another software program like Grammarly, so that it reflected an appropriate writing style,” the ruling reads.
The judges concluded that, rather than helping William learn to read, his accommodations “simply did the work for him.”
The appellate court ruled that CMCSS failed to offer an education suited to the student’s needs as required by the IDEA because the supports given to him allowed him to complete assignments but were not designed to help him overcome his obstacles in reading.
WSMV was given the following statement from CMCSS:
“There is still pending litigation, and we cannot comment on pending litigation. Additionally, I would not be able to discuss specifics of the allegations due to state and federal student privacy laws (FERPA).”
