Family faces legal fight with Aledo ISD over services for daughter with Down syndrome
Nearly five years ago, when Courtney Morey and her husband found out their daughter, Annie, had Down syndrome, one of her first thoughts was one of relief.
Only a month earlier, the Moreys had moved to eastern Parker County, to a neighborhood on the northwestern outskirts of Fort Worth. The neighborhood is a part of the Aledo Independent School District, and Morey had heard that the district had a good reputation not only for academics overall, but also for special education in particular. They hoped the district would have exactly the kinds of services Annie needed.
But getting Annie, who is now 4 years old, connected with those services would be more complicated than they expected. For the past year and a half, the family has been embroiled in a legal battle with Aledo ISD. District leaders insist that the family must consent to a full panel of assessments, which could include an IQ test. But the Moreys contend that Annie is too young for an IQ test to be appropriate. They worry that district leaders would use the results to put Annie in a special education program that wouldn’t allow her to reach her full potential.
“I’m not going to let people who have never even met my daughter make decisions that will impact her entire future by setting the bar low,” Morey said.
Parker County family struggles to get daughter into Aledo ISD
In Texas, children with certain disabilities are eligible to receive physical, occupational and speech therapy through the state Early Childhood Intervention program until their 3rd birthday. After that point, they’re generally eligible for special education services through their school district.
So when Annie’s 3rd birthday was approaching, Morey called Aledo ISD to talk about getting her signed up for services. During her first conversation with the district’s diagnostician about the process for getting Annie enrolled, Morey says, the diagnostician told her that it wouldn’t be appropriate to give Annie, who was barely 3 years old at the time, an IQ test. The diagnostician said she planned to use a play-based evaluation that’s geared more toward very young children, Morey said.
But two weeks later, Morey received a form from the district asking her to consent to a full battery of evaluations, including an IQ test. Alarmed, Morey called the diagnostician, who assured her that the form was just a standard consent document the district uses. The diagnostician promised to raise the issue with her supervisor. But weeks later, the district was still insisting on an IQ test, Morey said.
Morey harbors no illusions about Annie’s intellectual disability, and she isn’t opposed to having that label attached to her. But she worries that an IQ test wouldn’t show an accurate picture of what Annie is capable of. Most IQ tests are given verbally, and include vocabulary questions in which the child is asked to demonstrate their knowledge of words. Like many kids with Down syndrome, Annie has a speech delay, and Morey doubts she’d even be able to complete the test. She worries that, if she consents to the test, her daughter will be “pigeon-holed” into a special education classroom, where she won’t have the opportunities she’d have in a regular classroom.
In the autumn of 2023, the Moreys requested a due process hearing with the Texas Education Agency. Such hearings give parents and school districts the opportunity to present their arguments in front of a hearing officer, who acts as both judge and jury. Due process hearings don’t happen in a court of law, but the hearing officer’s decision carries the weight of a legal ruling.
During the hearing, the Moreys’ attorney presented the same point the couple had argued since the beginning — that an IQ test wasn’t appropriate for a child Annie’s age. Representatives for Aledo ISD argued that the assessment could be appropriate for Annie, and by refusing to consent to it, the Moreys were depriving the district of important data it needed to determine what services their daughter needed.
On March 19, 2024, the hearing officer ruled in the district’s favor, saying that the Moreys hadn’t shown adequate evidence that an IQ test would be inappropriate. A few weeks later, the family appealed the decision through one of the only avenues available: Filing suit against the district in federal court.
In an initial filing submitted at the end of October, the Moreys argued that Aledo ISD was violating federal disability rights laws by insisting that Annie undergo an IQ test before receiving services. They asked the judge to bar the district from requiring students to undergo a full panel of assessments, including an IQ test, before receiving services. The case is pending.
A spokesperson for Aledo ISD declined to comment. In court documents, the district’s attorneys argued that district leaders never insisted upon any specific test, saying they’d need to begin their evaluation process with Annie before they could even determine which assessments she needs. They also argue that federal law doesn’t allow parents to provide partial consent for assessments.
Placement can affect trajectory of kids with Down syndrome
The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, requires that schools place students in the least restrictive environment possible. That means districts must start from the presumption of putting students with disabilities in a general education classroom until it becomes apparent that they can’t be successful there.
Christopher Lemons, a professor of special education at Stanford University, said most 4-year-olds with Down syndrome can fare well in a general education classroom, with extra language or behavior support from their school district’s special education department.
Even if students with disabilities like Down syndrome can’t manage a general classroom environment at first, Lemons said, districts and parents have options other than placing the student in a self-contained special education classroom permanently. In some cases, he said, school leaders might opt to move a student to a special education classroom for a few weeks or months to work on certain skills, like speech, before moving them back to a regular classroom.
The least restrictive environment requirement can be a complicated thing for districts to navigate, Lemons said. Although districts have to approach every situation from the presumption of placing the student in a general education classroom, that placement isn’t the right fit for every student. If a student needs special support and services beyond what can be offered in a regular classroom, that environment is actually more restrictive for that student, not less, he said.
Even if the question of where to place a student with disabilities is a complicated one, it’s important that districts get it right, Lemons said. That decision has major ramifications for that student’s academic trajectory, he said. Once a student is placed in a special education classroom, it becomes less likely that they’ll ever be moved out of it and into a regular classroom.
Part of the reason for that trend is inertia, Lemons said — “the status quo is always the easiest to stick with.” But another factor is that students in special education classrooms generally don’t learn skills that would help them be successful in a regular classroom, he said.
In many cases, those students spend all day with other students with the same disabilities they have. That means they lose out on the chance to interact with other students who could model the behavior and communication expectations they’d see in a general education classroom, he said. So it’s generally best for districts to start students out in a general education classroom, and only move them to a special education classroom when it becomes obvious that they can’t succeed there, he said. In cases where districts move students to a special education classroom to work on a few specific skills before moving them back to a regular class, they should only do so with a clear timeline in place, he said.
Lemons said it isn’t uncommon for school districts to ask for an IQ test for students with disabilities. To qualify for special education services, students must fall into one of 13 categories of disability outlined in IDEA. Most students with Down syndrome qualify based on an intellectual disability, which requires an IQ test or something comparable to diagnose, he said. Parents have the right to object, he said. When they do, helpful school districts can usually find some other criteria, like a health impairment, under which the student qualifies, he said.
Lemons said he’s heard from many parents who object to having their child given an IQ test. Many worry that, once their child’s IQ is written down in their records, school leaders will use it as a reason to place the student in a special education classroom. Those concerns aren’t unfounded, Lemons said — he knows of cases where school principals have automatically placed students in self-contained classrooms if their IQ fell below a certain threshold.
The problem with that approach, he said, is that IQ is just one data point among many. And for young students, it isn’t always a very good indicator of how they’ll do in school.
“I’ve done many studies where we have kids who come in with a very low IQ who do incredibly well learning to read, being included,” he said. “And we also have some kids that come in with a higher IQ who struggle.”
Morey insists that an IQ test shouldn’t even be necessary for Annie to qualify for special education services. In addition to an intellectual disability, Annie also has a speech delay and a heart condition for which she’s undergone open heart surgery. Either of those conditions could also qualify as disabilities under IDEA.
The Moreys aren’t the only parents who are upset with how Aledo ISD is handling students with disabilities. During a March 17 school board meeting, eight parents spoke during public comment about the challenges they’d faced getting their children connected to special education services. Several, using near-identical language, accused Superintendent Susan Bohn and special programs director Margaret Bloodworth of “ignoring education laws, intimidating parents and driving out great teachers to serve their own agenda.”
Scott Caron, the father of a girl with Down syndrome, told the board that he and his wife had “worked through every tedious step” with the district to get their daughter, Eleanor Grace, the services she needs. They tried repeatedly to meet with district leaders to talk about the situation, he said, but to no avail. The situation left him convinced that district leaders are deliberately failing to provide Eleanor the education she’s legally entitled to.
‘I want to see what she can do’
With all the paperwork filed and procedures out of the way in their lawsuit against Aledo ISD, there’s nothing for the Moreys to do but wait for a ruling. Morey said she doesn’t know when to expect a decision — it could come this week, or it could be months from now.
In the meantime, Annie is enrolled in KinderFrogs, a program at TCU’s College of Education for children with Down syndrome and other developmental delays. Having Annie in the program has given Morey a chance to see the broad range of strengths and deficits that kids with disabilities have. Even though most of them have the same diagnosis, it’s a diverse group, she said. That means school leaders can’t give them all a single label and expect it to be an accurate predictor of what they need or what their futures look like.
The same is true for Annie, Morey said. When she sees her daughter interacting with the neurotypical peer model students at KinderFrogs, she can tell she’s mimicking their behavior and learning more about what’s expected in a classroom setting. Morey is confident that Annie could do well in a regular classroom if Aledo ISD would give her the chance.
“She’s very capable,” Morey said. “And with the right support, I want to see what she can do.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
