Virginia school district drops speech pathologist after he sided with parents in disputes

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. (WJLA) — A public school district in Virginia reportedly dropped a speech pathologist from their list of regular evaluators after he continuously sided with parents in disputes over their children's speech evaluations.

WJLA obtained an email dated July 14, 2023, sent from one of the school district's executive administrative assistants to the Director for the Special Education Department to other school district staff members, informing them Dr. Jay Lucker was no longer on the list of speech-language pathologists.

"[We] removed Dr. Jay Lucker from our speech provider list," the email read in part. "Dr. Lucker does not give good evaluations and typically sides with the parents. We took him off the list but did not send him a formal letter to state that we are removing him from our provider list. I don't think we are required to do that."

Dr. Lucker, who had been on the Prince William County Public Schools' list of providers for 10 years, told EJLA he disputes this assessment of his work.

My reaction, immediately, is the school district doesn't like what I'm saying because I don't agree with everything they say," he explained. "I want to do the best for the individual student. I don't side with parents; I side with the student.

"I'm also a researcher, so researchers, we take facts," Lucker added. "I look at the facts ... what does that evidence tell me about the individual student that I've done an evaluation on, what does the student need, and what are the things we can do to help the student - accommodations - and what are the treatments the child needs, based on the formal standardized test, plus my interactions with that student?"

WJLA followed up by asking Lucker what he meant when he said the school district did not agree with his findings. He said it boiled down to his process, which he thinks is more in-depth and comprehensive than those of other speech pathologists employed by the school.

"[The schools' speech-language pathologists] very often do informal, observational measures of pragmatic communication with no formal tests. But I do a formal evaluation: 'You seem to communicate okay, but it's in a very controlled situation.' Now I'm going to give you a test. How would you communicate in this situation? If the teacher were to ask you a question, and you don't understand the question, what would you say to the teacher to clarify that question?"

The speech-language pathologist of the school might have just said, 'Hi, what's your name? What class are you in?' Just very basic stuff without a social situational comment, and say there's no pragmatic problems," he continued.

One parent who has gone to Dr. Lucker to have her daughter evaluated told WJLA she is baffled by the school district's decision.

"As someone who has personally used Dr. Lucker's services, he's a true professional. He is somebody who cares about children. He is a professor. He is a true expert in every sense of the word," said Dr. Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco. "In my experience with Dr. Lucker, he does not side with parents. He does not side with schools. He sides with data. He does an unbiased evaluation and goes where the data takes him."

In response to WJLA's questions about his removal from their list of regular speech evaluators, a spokesperson for Prince William County Schools said, "We have continued to use Dr. Lucker as an independent educational evaluation provider when requested by a parent.

Lucker told WJLA that even though parents can still seek him out to evaluate their children, his removal from the list still presents an added burden. He also said he believes, at the end of the day, the students suffer as a result of this decision by the school district.

"The danger is what they're basically saying in that is that, 'Unless you find someone doing evaluations who are going to agree with us and do what we, the school, want,' it's no longer independent even though it's called an independent educational evaluation," he argued.

WJLA has previously reported on numerous instances in which the Virginia Department of Education has found Prince William County Public Schools to be in violation of state and federal special education laws - including not providing enough accommodations and not providing enough learning hours, which led the state to rule in at least one case that the school district must pay the private school tuition of a former student who left the school district due to violations.