Behavioral Intervention Plan

What the Law Says

The basic framework of legal requirements consists of the IDEA legislation and its regulations. Hailed for establishing the FBA-BIP model, the 1997 amendments to the legislation expressly mentioned an FBA, and they also mentioned a BIP indirectly within the limited context of a disciplinary change in placement. The amendments specifically require school board officials “to convene an IEP [individualized education program] meeting to develop an assessment plan” to address behavior that leads to placement changes, if children do not already have FBAs and BIPs. There were only two relevant related requirements in the disciplinary context: One was that children receive, in their changed placements, “services and modifications designed to address the behavior” that triggered the [Page 65]placement change. The other was that the manifestation determination include the criteria by which it was decided that the school board officials had provided appropriate “behavior intervention strategies consistent with the child's IEP and placement.”

Finally, and more broadly, the 1997 amendments required the IEP team “in the case of a child whose behavior impedes his or her learning or that of others [to] consider, when appropriate, strategies, including positive behavioral interventions … to address that behavior” [emphasis supplied].

The 2004 amendments retained and even strengthened the IEP requirement by removing the qualifier “when appropriate.” Yet, in the disciplinary context, IDEA as amended in 2004 revised the express FBA-BIP requirement by limiting it to the reduced situations where the team determined that the behavior was a manifestation of the child's disability. Moreover, as part of its reduction of these manifestation determination results, the 2004 version removed altogether the related criterion discussed above. Finally, the 2004 amendments revised the other related requirements to having the child “receive, as appropriate, a functional behavioral assessment and behavior intervention services and modifications designed to address the behavior” (20 U.S.C. 1415(k)(D)(ii)).

The 1999 IDEA regulations made one significant addition: They extended the assessment plan requirement to the 11th cumulative day of removal in a school year; however, because the 2006 IDEA regulations dropped this requirement, it remains to be seen exactly how this will work.

Court Rulings

In light of this sketchy and soft framework, the published hearing/review officer and court decisions have been neither frequent nor consistent. A pair of contrasting cases is amply illustrative. In Mason City Community School District, 36 IDELR ¶ 50 (Iowa 2001), a hearing officer, who is a special education professor, noted the relevant IDEA requirements, including the absence of any definition or standards for a BIP The hearing officer approved the district's BIP, while finding that the removals had not reached the requisite level. The significant aspect of the case is that the hearing officer cobbled together four required components for a BIP, specifically that it must be based on assessment data, be individualized, include positive behavior change strategies, and be consistently implemented and monitored. Although she comprehensively canvassed the published hearing/ review officer decisions to date, the underlying authority for these relatively modest standards was notably limited by the absence of court decisions and the failure of any of the cited cases to attempt any such systematic specification.

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