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D.C. Letter 15: The Compensatory-Education Worksheet

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When to Use It

Use this when your child was owed services and did not receive them, and you want the make-up ordered. The D.C. Circuit's standard is qualitative and individualized, not an hour-for-hour credit: the award should be reasonably calculated to place the child in the position the child would likely have occupied absent the denial (Reid v. District of Columbia, 401 F.3d 516, 524 (D.C. Cir. 2005)). A later, adequate IEP does not by itself moot a comp-ed claim for the period before it (Boose v. District of Columbia, 786 F.3d 1054 (D.C. Cir. 2015)), and a hearing officer who denies or trims an award for want of a fully worked-out plan can be reversed for being too stingy with the remedy the record supports (B.D. v. District of Columbia, 817 F.3d 792 (D.C. Cir. 2016)).

One correction belongs on the page before you build the ask. Reid, Boose, and B.D. do not hold, as a matter of D.C. Circuit law, that a parent must arrive with an expert-built plan before comp-ed can be awarded; B.D. itself reversed a hearing officer for denying an award on that ground. The expectation that you show up with a detailed, expert-supported plan is a strong and common practice norm among District judges and hearing officers, not a categorical legal requirement, and this worksheet is built to meet that norm because it is what actually wins awards in practice, while keeping the legal citation honest about where the norm comes from and where it does not.

The age arithmetic is D.C.-specific and easy to get wrong by importing a neighboring jurisdiction's number. FAPE in the District runs through the end of the school year in which the child turns 22, with one exception: a child whose 22nd birthday falls between school years, rather than during one, loses eligibility at that point instead of gaining the extra partial year (5-A DCMR § 3001, checked August 13, 2026; DC-Tool 35). Comp-ed math built on an age-21 cutoff, a figure some materials from other jurisdictions carry, is wrong here and will understate what your child is owed. Child find itself runs ages 3 through 22 for the Part B population this worksheet covers; a separate child-find duty, run through Strong Start DC EIP under IDEA Part C, reaches children from birth through age 2.

Use it with: DC-Tool 31 (compensatory education) and DC-Tool 35 (the D.C. rights nobody tells you about).