Special education audit

Done by District and Community Partners
Good stuff:

• staff committed and passionate
• instructional coaches
• formative assessments
• leadership team (from sped director down)
• reasonable level of related service providers
• increasing level of student achievement
• "bold leadership"

Things they think ought to be changed:

• high rate of identification (Worcester 21.3%; MA is 17.6%): so they think we ought to "refine" the criteria for those below first grade; add supports for young kids; employ expert behaviorists
• use common formative assessments "to identify effective practices, programs, schools, and teachers" (yeah, that means comparing student data by teacher, folks)
• focus on core instruction (there's an MCAS chart here); saw variation from building to building
• lower out-of-district placement; substantially separate classrooms, resource and inclusion (they're suggesting those kids are not held to the same standards)

Results were shared with some on April 29
"no additional funding" necessary from the "vision of the report"

Monfredo: "I want to make sure that everyone understands the good things you said about Worcester first"
asks if we could expand full-day preschool, preventive items

Foley: "I see this as the beginning...strategic plan for the district...restructure and reform..improve services for all children..quibble on...don't use the state average; compare us to other urban districts...kids being identified in first grade; failure of getting the right referrals from pediatricians; Early Intervention is undergoing major cuts...kids entering kindergarten not ready to be in school..working on getting those kids able to be in school...how do we do a lot more with kids zero to five...ready to learn when they hit kindergarten...subgroups to a certain level..modify expectations of substantially separate"

Novick: asks how we paid for it and how much it costs ($45,000, of which the state covered $10,000; our portion was stimulus funding), echoes Foley in not comparing us to the state average (nor the national average), reassessing younger students again (rather than not assessing the younger students), will be paying close attention to tracking by students

Biancheria: setting a trend, rather than best practices moving from California, from us