No Child Left Behind: A Challenge for Special Education

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No Child Left Behind A Challenge for Special
Education

• Meeting the Challenge Through Collaborative
  Leadership and Systemic Change
• Judith Moening
• North East I.S.D., San Antonio, Texas

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NCLB A Challenge to the Traditional Model of
Special Education

• Traditional model of special education
• Serving students with disabilities at their
  functional level
• Pulling students with disabilities out of general
  education to provide instruction
• No Child Left Behind
• Requires assessment of all on grade level
  standards
• Requires all students to demonstrate progress
  along a single standard

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No Child Left Behind

• Meeting the Intent of NCLB requires school
  districts to
• To align instruction with assessment for all
  students
• To align leadership at all levels of a school
  system from central office to the classroom

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What did North East do?

• Reflect
• Examined data and our practices about teaching
  and testing students with disabilities
• Compared ourselves to state on key statistics
• Revise
• Abandoned practice of teaching and assessing
  special education students below grade level
• Created the Data Coaching framework as a way to
  collaboratively guide and support individual
  campuses
• Retool
• Utilized Data Coaching for ongoing review of
  campus progress and adjustment of campus
  practices along the way

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Sources of Support

• Leadership for Equity and Excellence book study
  with campus administrators
• Presentation by authors at district wide
  administrative meetings
• Jim Scheurich and Linda Skrla
• Data Wise Project Harvard Graduate School of
  Education
• Provided framework for Data Coaching process

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Equity Consciousness

• Four central beliefs Repeated at all leadership
  meetings
• 1) All children are capable of high levels of
  academic success
• 2) Academic success equitably includes all
  student groups
• 3) Adults in schools are primarily responsible
• 4) Traditional school practices result in
  inequity and must be changed.

Scheurich, Skrla McKenzie
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Percentage of Special Education Students Served
in SPED Setting for More Than 50 of School Day
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NEISD
Data Set Includes Districts that tested more than
500 students on SDAAII
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Improvement Cycle
Adapted from Data Wise, Boudett, City, and
Murnane, 2005
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The Power of Data Coaching is in the Questions!

• What do these data seem to tell us?
• What do they not tell us?
• What else would we need to know?
• What good news is there here for us to celebrate?
• What needs for School Improvement might arise
  from these data?

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Central Office Data Coaching Teams

• Division of Instruction led by Chief
  Instructional Officer for district
• Mixed teams of Curriculum, Special Education,
  Title I, ELL, Educational Technology central
  office support staff
• Each team worked with 10-12 schools
• Identified a Tier of Schools most at risk of
  failure
• Larger group of data coaches
• Additional meetings to brainstorm interventions
• Additional professional development provided
• Additional support offered as needed

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Working on the Work Four Data Coaching
Assignments

• Assignment 1 Campus Power Point to explain data
  to the campus
• Assignment 2 Put a face to the data by
  considering student groups and individual
  students
• Assignment 3 Fine tune intervention plans
• Assignment 4 Celebrate success and refine plans
  for the next year

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Data Coaching Assignment 1

• Principal as Instructional Leader of the
  CampusPresentation of a Campus Focus on Student
  Data and Achievement

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Content of Assignment 1

• Principal power point presentation for faculty at
  back to school meeting
• Present data for the campus
• Trends, strengths/areas of concerns
• Summarize beliefs about teaching and learning
• Lay out a plan for the campus
• Prior to campus presentation principal shared
  with data coaching team and fine tuned the
  presentation

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Data Coaching Assignment 2

• Putting a face on the data so that students are
  known as members of student groups and as
  individuals in need of support
• Completed prior to Thanksgiving
• Focuses campus attention on individual students
  in need of additional intervention and identified
  campus trends and patterns

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• DATA COACHING ROUND II PLANNING FOR RESULTS
• Fall, 2007

• 1. What are Your Top Three Campus Goals     
• 2. Where Are We Now? (based on review of data) -
  Principals along with their leadership teams will
  analyze the data and summarize issues and
  findings in the following areas    
• TAKS objectives by content area which are issues
  for the campus     
• Student performance by individual teacher and/or
  teams of teachers     
• Student performance by student populations
• AEIS subgroups    and  AYP subgroups  
• 3. What is Your Plan? (Review Campus Improvement
  Plans Based On Analysis of Issues and Findings
  Seen in the Data) How does the existing CIP
  address the issues/findings?     

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DATA COACHING ROUND II PLANNING FOR
RESULTS Fall, 2007

• 4. What is the plan for focused walk-throughs in
  classrooms and monitoring of the campus
  plan?     
• 5. How is the campus addressing classroom
  teachers fidelity to the districts scope and
  sequence?     
• 6.How are walk-throughs being used to increase
  teacher efficacy and to build capacity on the
  campus?     
•  7. What is the effectiveness of the current
  master schedule in addressing issues/findings?    
   
• 8. How is the campus addressing allotted time for
  instruction vs. actual focused time for
  instruction?     

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Data Coaching Assignment 3January or February

• Review of campus intervention plans for all
  student groups Mid course corrections
• Includes a summary review of current data on all
  student groups
• Assessment plan for ELL and special education
  students
• Focuses on alignment of all support systems for
  students
• Student attendance
• Failure rates by teacher and subject
• Intervention plans targeted toward state exams

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3. Summarize data for ALL special education
students
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• JANUARY, 2007 DATA COACHING ASSIGNMENT III
• Planning for Student Success
• Timeline
• Complete/gather/review data for your campus in
  the following areas between January 3 and January
  17
• Use the data to answer questions which are
  listed below
• Meet with your data coaches between January 17
  and February 3
• Data Areas and Questions
• Begin with the end in mind. Review Testing
  Calendar and distribute to all staff and have
  them highlight their dates.
• Review data again for ALL special education
  students.
• Review data for ELL students.

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• Require that students who have no test data or
  first time TAKS/SDAA II takers, take released
  test(s)
• Review failure rates for your campus by subject
  and by teacher.
• Review student absenteeism for the campus by
  subject and by teacher.
• Meet with departments/grade levels including
  SPED, ELL and counselors to outline weekly plans
  for instructional support.
• Review benchmark scores for the campus in all
  academic areas.
• What is the plan for using Project Target TEKS
  funds?

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The Rewards of Action Accountability Results

• 2005-06
• District
• Made AYP
• Identified as Recognized under Texas system
• Campuses
• Exemplary (90) 11 campuses
• Recognized (70) 31
• Acceptable (50) 18
• All campuses made AYP

• 2006-07
• District Made AYP
• Campuses
• Exemplary (90) 9
• Recognized (70) 29
• Acceptable (50) 11
• Low performing - 1
• 2 campuses failed AYP

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The Rewards of Action Student Results

• Student Results 2006-07
• 99.6 of all students assessed on grade level in
  reading
• 99 of all students assessed on grade level in
  math
• Special education students taking regular state
  exam-TAKS
• 83 passed reading
• 74 passed math
• Over 96 of special education students met the
  expectations set by their IEP team

• Student Results 2005-06
• 98.5 of all students assessed on grade level in
  reading
• 98 of all students assessed on grade level in
  math
• Special education students taking regular state
  exam TAKS
• 85 passed reading
• 73 passed math
• Over 97 of special education students met the
  expectations set by their IEP team

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The Rewards of Action Increased Campus Capacity
for Leadership

• Leadership teams now include principal, assistant
  principal, deans, counselors and special
  education campus coordinators
• Campus leadership teams deeply understand both
  state and federal accountability systems
• Campus leadership more knowledgeable about how to
  respond to student data through a tiered approach
• Every student counts is now more than a slogan on
  the wall!

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To create an equitable and excellent classroom
or school, we need to make the commitment to do
this the heart of our efforts. Every day, every
week, we need to reaffirm our commitment to this.
This is a righteous journey, a democratic
journey, a spiritual journey. Scheurich and
Skrla
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• REFERENCES
• Data Wise A Step by Step Guide to Using
  Assessment
• Results to Improve Teaching and Learning.
  Katherine
• Boudett, Elizabeth City, and Richard Murnane.
  (2005).
• Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard Education
  Press.
• Leadership for Equity and Excellence. James
• Scheurich and Linda Skrla. (2003).
• Thousand Oaks, CA. Corwin Press.