Data Driven Decision Making: A systems approach to Disproportionality

1. Data Driven Decision Making: A systems approach to Disproportionality Alfredo J. Artiles, Arizona State University Teresa Dais, North Carolina Department of Education Elizabeth Kozleski, University of Colorado at Denver & Health Sciences Center

2. Agenda • Introductions  (20 minutes) • Case story from NC (20 minutes) • NCCRESt TA model (30 minutes) • Multilevel data discussion - (30minutes) • How does culture, race and equity complicate the conversation? (40 minutes) • Examine your model of TA/Leadership/PL - (30 minutes)

3. Introductions •  What roles do you play in education? (chart paper) •  What do you hope to learn this afternoon? (chart paper) •  What state/territory do you live in? •  What is your model for providing technical assistance/leadership/professional development?  (at your table)

4. What is Disproportionality? The over or under-identification of students in some racial/ethnic and/or language groups for services in special education

5. Why should we pay attention to disproportionality? If IDEA provides extra resources and the right to a more individualized education program, why would one consider disproportionate representation of minority children a problem (Dononvan & Cross, 2002, 2)?

6. The Cost of a Label The answer, as every parent of a child receiving special education services knows, is that in order to be eligible for the additional resources a child must be labeled as having a disability, a label that signals substandard performance. And while that label is intended to bring additional supports, it may also bring lowered expectations on the part of teachers, other children, and the identified student. When a child cannot learn without the additional supports, and when the supports improve outcomes for the child, that trade-off may well be worth making. But, because there is a trade-off, both the need and the benefit should be established before the label and the cost are imposed (Donovan & Cross, 2002, 3).

7. Considerations • Special Education may not provide the supports that a student needs • Disability label may stigmatize a student as inferior • Results in lowered expectations • Potentially separates the student from peers • May lead to poor educational and life outcomes • Students may be denied access to the general education curriculum • May result in dropout • Students may be misunderstood or underserved in General Education

8. What is NCCRESt doing? Provides technical assistance and professional development to • close the achievement gap between students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their peers, and • reduce inappropriate referrals to special education.

9. The NCCRESt Response • A TA & D Center focused on equity, access, participation in GENERAL education. • Professional Development • Practitioners, School Leaders, District and State PD and TA providers • Technical Assistance • Information Systems • GIS Maps to tell the story • On-line Learning Communities to build the Networks • Teleconferences to engage educational communities • Product Development • Practitioner Briefs • Assessment Tool • Articles and journal issues targeting the Research Community

10. The North Carolina Story Teresa Dais

11. Data! Data! Data!

12. In the Past

13. Help! Help! Help!!

14. Rescue

15. Method of Rescue

16. LEVELS OF SIGNIFICANCE R I S K R A T I O ≥ 3 Focused Record Review Professional Development Technical Assistance State, Regional & Local Monitoring Staff SEA Staff 1 to < 3 Desk Audit LEA-Level Disproportionality Task Force Continuous Improvement Performance Plan < 1 Letter Associate Superintendent Curriculum and School Reform Services

17. Modify Actions Basedon New Knowledge Continuous Process Process for Addressing Disproportionality Study / Reflect /Evaluate Interventions Intensive Intervention(PD/TA) Focused Record Review Risk Ratio Risk AnalysisGoals and Purpose Modify Actions Based on New Knowledge Evaluate the Effectiveness of Interventions Conduct Focused Record Review In school systems in succession from greatest to least “Risk Ratio” Provide Intensive Intervention (PD/TA) to school systems in Focused Record Review and Desk Audit Phases December 1, 2004 Child Count & 2005 Statistical Profile (Pupils in Membership) Use Risk Analysis to determine school systems with significant disproportionality based on Risk Ratio Note: Design deviated from Art Costa & Benakallick Habits of Mind Series

18. Relationships are the Key

19. NCDPI Promising Practices • Positive Behavior Support • Instructional Consultation • Response to Intervention/ Problem Solving Model • Reading/Writing & Math Best Practice Sites • Early Literacy Best Practice Sites • Project Bright Idea (AIG)

20. On Board

21. Group Discussion •     What did you hear? •     What lessons did you learn? •     How do they jibe with your model?

22. A Framework for TA and PL

23. NCCRESt Design of TA & PL • Design of our TA model and a set of artifacts created to mediate the work of SEA personnel to address disproportionality. 1. Critique of past work on disproportionality 2. NCCRESt Response: Create mediating structures for TA and PL

24. Critique:Culture & Space in Disproportionality 1.) Analytic focus: Physical dimensions of space (placement in sped programs). 2.) Culture is ignored • when included: student traits (i.e., ethnic or linguistic background) or individuals’ psyches (e.g., beliefs, learning styles) (Artiles, 2003). • School cultures (including professional practices) are ignored. 3.) The perspective of the analyst is invisible • Researchers’ assumptions about culture and space • Explanations of the problem that guide researchers’ meaning making processes or analytical decisions.

25. Critique: The Object of SEA work • SEA Perspective: Macro view of professional practice-- “The view from above.” • Compliance and monitoring • Aggregated data: State placement patterns, school district data, evidence from clusters of schools in cities or regions.

26. “The view from above” • Traditional artifacts: Proportion tables (disability placement by ethnicity) • Connections between technical, historical, & cultural factors? • Ideological and semiotic underpinnings of professional practices? Examples include • data interpretation and decision-making grounded in individual-based assumptions about disability and culture • use of information infrastructures without regard for the nature and premises of databases (e.g., categorical, cross-sectional, fossilized culture).

27. NCCREST Response Technical assistance as mediating structure • Create mediating contexts to support SEA/LEA personnel learning about disproportionality. • Activity system is the unit of analysis. • Individual mediation and institutional contexts

28. Technical Assistance Activity as Mediating Structure Artifacts • GIS Maps • Databases • Discourse • Theoretical constructs on the cultural nature of learning Object • Outcomes • Culturally responsive educational system Subject Dispropor-tionality of minority students in special education SEA Team Rules Community Division of Labor SEA: General education, special education, and professional development groups. LEA: Administrators, students teachers/interns, families. 1. Commitment to all learners in the activity system. 2. Agreement to engage in technical, practical, and critical reflection and discourse about the role of culture in learning. 3. Commitment to view contradictions and disruptions as opportunities for growth. • Vertical • Horizontal • Dynamic/lateral

29. TA as Mediating StructureForging New Spaces 1. Physical space and its intersection with cultural practices • Artifact design: Material and psychological (Blanton et al., 1998). • Maps and databases; beliefs and assumptions • Culture: Historical, instrumental, situated

30. TA as Mediating StructureForging New Spaces 2. Social spaces and the production of conceived spaces • Discursive and cognitive practices used in TA and PL activities/sessions

31. Artifact Design for Systemic Change:Toward a cartography of disproportionality Create new perceptual fields with visual representations “where space is used to represent a spatial dispersion that offers, when combined with discourse analysis, a system of possibility for new knowledge (Paulston, 1996, p. 4, emphasis in original).

32. Artifact Design for Systemic Change • Re-present placement evidence as embedded in grids of cultural, temporal, and spatial vectors. • Re-mediate the state leadership’s ways of analyzing and interpreting the problem with a new kind of evidence in the context of TA practices.

33. Artifact design for systemic change:GIS Maps & Databases • Physical space and its intersection with cultural practices - Multiple levels, representation systems, and perspectives • Multiple levels: Placement patterns at national, regional, state, and city levels • To witness the metamorphosis of disproportionality across levels enable SEA personnel to shift their analytic gaze from the view from above to local landscapes around a city

34. Artifact design for systemic change:GIS Maps & Databases • Multiple representation systems:Interface with databases • Colors, icons and areas; numbers, trends • Multipleperspectives • From a state overall status to the possibility to stand inside the map of a school

35. Producing Social & Conceived Spaces • Discursive and cognitive practices • Examine assumptions about the intersection of race, class, ability, & culture in classrooms • Rubric Development for LEA Monitoring and Problem Solving • Discussion of Practitioner Briefs • Analysis of Leadership Academies • From personal experience to theoretical sense-making • Examination of personal and professional identities and how they mediate practice • Modeling Distributed Expertise • Network Development among states

36. b) Deepen teams’ understanding of the problem c) Identify features of good solutions d) Self-evaluation and setting the stage e) Develop an action plan a) Define the problem Cycles of Inquiry, Reflection, & Action

37. In summary 1. Connect Place & Practice • Understand intersections physical space & professional practices • Artifact design: Multiple levels, presentation systems, and perspectives 2. Complicate Culture: Instrumental, historical 3. Engineer Social Spaces • Discursive and cognitive practices: re-mediate analysis and practices: Features? • Negotiate conceived spaces: Visions of a better future

38. What are your Artifacts? Outcomes? Division of labor? Community? Rules? Participants/Leaders? What elements do you have and understand? What is missing? What does this model mean for your work?

39. How can data help us to engageour audiences?

41. Questions to Answer • What do you predict? • What do you notice? • What patterns do you see? • What questions do these data create? • What needs to be answered? • What does this mean about • TA, Professional Learning, Policy Agendas? • Who needs to be engaged? • How?

45. Data Driven Dialogue • Were there differences in your predictions and the data? • What assumptions under girded your predictions? • What are plausible reasons for the data as it is? • Which of these is worth exploring? • Why?

47. NCCRESt Data Manager • www.nccrest.org • Click data manager

48. How does race, culture and equity complicate the work? • For whom and how? • What does the North Carolina story tell us about moving forward?

49. TA Strategy • Build State Capacity to Provide TA and PD • Build skill sets at SEA Level • Work in teams that cut across SEA, Advocacy & District personnel • Identify districts that are improving and build strategies to support their work • Identify districts that are developing and build capacity

50. TA Delivery Model