SECTION 1. NEEDS
1.1 Demographics and Background
Georgia is the 8th largest state in the nation with a population of 9.8 million people, 159 counties, and 188 school districts serving 1,634,251 students. The 2,246 public schools in Georgia serve a diverse population with the following racial/ethnic distribution: White, 44%; Black, 37%; Hispanic, 12%; Asian, 3%; Multi-Racial, 3%; and American Indian, 1%.
Georgia was an early adopter of the Common Core with its Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS) and is a governing member of the PARCC assessment consortium. Consequently, all Georgia students will be expected to meet more rigorous performance standards beginning with the CCGPS implementation in 2012-2013. In order to serve our diverse population of students and ensure that all Georgia students, including those with disabilities and those at risk of school failure, can attain these more rigorous expectations, the new Georgia State School Superintendent has established the goal of “Making Education Work for all Georgians.” In order to achieve this goal, each school must use evidence-based practices that educate students to be analytical thinkers, create a positive school climate where students are proactively taught responsible behavior and provided regular reinforcement, provide layers of support and targeted instruction for students having difficulty, provide evidenced-based reading instruction for emerging readers and those students who are experiencing difficulty learning to read, and provide appropriate supports and accommodations for students with disabilities (SWD) so they can be active participants in general education settings and fully engaged in the school and can graduate from high school equipped to become contributing citizens.
1.2 Statewide Needs and Outcome Indicators
In 1999, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE), Division for Special Education
Services and Supports collaborated with a variety of partners, including the State Advisory Panel (SAP), to develop Performance Goals for SWD. The seven goals, originally developed for the first Georgia State Improvement Grant (SIG), provided the building blocks for the ten Performance Goals for SWD. With the development of the State Performance Plan (SPP), these goals have evolved into 20 SPP indicators for SWD (See Appendix A, pg. 1, subsequently referred to as A-1, etc.). The three proposed SPDG Initiatives/Goals will contribute to addressing 50% of the SPP indicators.
Continued efforts to meet or exceed the targets on the SPP indicators, as part of the SPP and the overall State Personnel Development Plan (See A-3), involve collaboration with other divisions within GaDOE, including Assessment/Research, Development and Administration; School Improvement Services; Information Technology; Curriculum and Instruction; Career, Technical and Agricultural Education; Student Support Teams; and Federal Programs, which includes Title I and Migrant Education. These various divisions, along with the Office of Race to the Top, assisted in determining the requirements, creating data elements, mining and organizing data, and developing action steps.
The State Advisory Panel (SAP) for Special Education provides ongoing input from stakeholders during the development of the Annual Performance Report (APR). The SAP membership includes parents of SWD, individuals with disabilities, local district educational administrators, general and special education teachers, local district special education directors, as well as representatives from a college/university that prepares special education teachers, IDEA Part C (Babies Can’t Wait), the Department of Juvenile Justice, Vocational Rehabilitation, the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, Parent Training Information Center (PTI), Georgia Council of Administrators of Special Education (GCASE), and the Superintendents’ Association. Recently, the SAP received an overview of the State Performance Plan (SPP), and members were divided into workgroups to analyze each indicator, including the requirements of the indicator, the trend performance on the data, and current initiatives/activities being implemented to impact those initiatives. Workgroups then reviewed the requirements of the SPP/APR and made recommendations to the State regarding the revision of targets and activities. Additional input is obtained by the state director of special education in meetings each quarter with a group of special education directors as a part of Director’s Forums. During these sessions, feedback and issues are discussed regarding many of the indicators, targets, and activities.
While the Division for Special Education Services and Supports worked on the SPP, APR, and current SPDG, the GaDOE has been measuring adequate yearly progress for schools throughout Georgia in accordance with the Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA). As of March 2012, the GaDOE has been granted a waiver from No Child Left Behind. GaDOE now categorizes schools and provides resources to those determined to be most in need of improving their student achievement and graduation rates. In the ESEA waiver, a school categorized as a “Focus School” is identified as:
· A Title I school that has the largest within school gaps between the highest achieving subgroup or subgroups and the lowest achieving subgroup or subgroups or, at the high school level, has the largest within school gaps in graduation rates.
· A Title I school with a graduation rate less than 60% over a number of years.
Ten percent of Georgia’s Title I schools are identified as Focus Schools. At the school level, aggregate achievement results for all subgroups are based on assessment data; and all End-of-Course Tests (EOCT), Criterion Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT), and Georgia Alternate Assessments (GAA) are used to determine the rank of each school. The actual calculation of the gap between the lowest and highest performing subgroups at a school is determined by using Z scores with a minimum N size of 30. Of the schools identified as Focus Schools, 149 or 95.5% had SWD as the lowest performing subgroup. As a result of this finding, the GaDOE wants to utilize the knowledge, resources, and interventions implemented in a major component of the current SPDG entitled GraduateFIRST to assist in closing the gaps identified at these schools.
1.3 GraduateFIRST Needs Addressed and Outcomes – Initiative/Goal 1
The GraduateFIRST program (current SPDG) has directly addressed the first four need indicators of the SPP for schools exhibiting large achievement gaps. GraduateFIRST is a Georgia statewide SPDG initiative that uses a data-driven intervention framework, developed by the National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD), to address issues that negatively impact graduation rates. The program creates and trains local school-based teams/team leaders to diagnose the causes of dropout and develop site-specific improvement plans that include evidence-based strategies to address these causes. Three cohorts of participating schools receive technical assistance, coaching, and resources to help school teams continuously monitor and support SWD and at-risk students. Professional development includes modules provided by the NDPC-SD, as well as evidence-based strategies designed to increase attendance, improve behavior, and engage students academically. Evidence-based strategies are also provided to help targeted students develop caring relationships with adults, a sense of school connectedness, and self-determination/self-advocacy skills. GraduateFIRST nationally recognized success has been measured by using the seven probes developed by the NDPC-SD. The following Table 1 shows the seven GraduateFIRST probes and the SPP indicators to which they relate.
Table 1. Comparison of GraduateFIRST probes and the SPP indicators.
GraduateFIRST Probes / SPP IndicatorsPercent of IEP students graduating with regular diplomas / 1. Percent of youth with IEPs graduating with regular diploma
Reduction in dropout rate / 2. Dropout rate
Absence rate of more than 15 days / 3. Participation and performance of SWD
Percent meeting or exceeding English/Language Arts testing standards / 3. Participation and performance of SWD
Percent meeting or exceeding Math testing standards / 3. Participation and performance of SWD
Rate of ISS for students grades 5-12 / 4. Rates of suspension and expulsion
Rate of OSS for students grades 5-12 / 4. Rates of suspension and expulsion
GraduateFIRST Cohort 1-3 schools have posted positive gains in improving graduation rates, reducing the dropout rates, decreasing Out of School Suspension (OSS) and In School Suspension (ISS) referrals, increasing attendance rates, and improving reading and math for SWD. Through Year 5 of the current SPDG, the first Cohort of GraduateFIRST schools (N=28 consisting of 16 middle and 12 high schools) continued to implement, with success, evidence-based interventions related to improving graduation rates and reducing dropout rates for students with and without disabilities. Probe results for Cohort 1 were analyzed comparing baseline data to 2010-2011 (third year of implementation data). The Mann-Whitney Test was performed on all data variables except in-school suspension (ISS) and out-of-school suspension (OSS) referrals to determine whether the differences were significant from baseline after three years of intervention. For the ISS and OSS referrals, the Paired T-Test was used to determine whether the differences between baseline and end of third year implementation were significant.
Overall, the data showed excellent progress. Statistically significant differences from Cohort 1 Middle Schools from baseline to 2010-2011 were found in R/ELA CRCT percent passing (p=0.045), math CRCT percent passing (p=0.00), number of ISS Full Day Referrals (p=0.044), and number of OSS referrals (p=0.021). In the Cohort l High Schools, statistically significant differences from baseline were found in GHSGT math percent passing (p=0.043); percent absent 15+ days -increased attendance (p=0.043), graduation rate for all students (p=0.005) and those with disabilities (p=0.021); dropout rate for all students (p=0.013)—; and in the number of ISS and OSS referral probabilities of 0.081 and 0.087 respectively. Significant strides were made in the past five years in closing the achievement, graduation, dropout, and suspension rate gaps for SWD in the participating Cohort schools. As referenced above, significant progress toward these need indicators was evident in short annual time-series data and in the advancement of SWD on the data probes. Based on these positive results from the GraduateFIRST implementation, the GaDOE has decided to use the GraduateFIRST model to support Focus Schools in Georgia. In partnership with the School Improvement Division at the GaDOE, new high need Cohort schools will be selected from the 156 identified Focus Schools to participate in the new proposed GraduateFIRST project.
New graduation requirements were initiated in Georgia with the 2008 first time ninth graders that mandate a single diploma option requiring a minimum of 23 Carnegie units and the meeting of assessment requirements specified in the testing rule. While a provision for students with significant cognitive disabilities to meet diploma requirements is included in the new graduation rule, consistent with Georgia legislation, a student’s IEP team cannot override the graduation requirements. To continue improving graduation rates for SWD under these new, more rigorous graduation requirements, the implementation of proven, evidence-based interventions are essential for the identified high need Focus Schools.
1.4 College and Career Ready – Initiative/Goal 2
College and Career Ready is a three-phase initiative focusing on SPP Indicators 13 and 14 and concentrating on secondary transition and postsecondary outcomes for SWD: 13 focuses on writing compliant transition plans, while 14 looks at student outcomes one year after graduation, including enrollment in postsecondary education or training programs and employment.
As a part of its continuous improvement monitoring process and under the responsibilities of general supervision, the Division of Special Education reviews school district records to determine needs and verify compliant transition plans in local districts. Twenty districts and four Regional Youth Detention Centers (RYDC) received record reviews during the 2010-2011 school year. Nineteen of the twenty-four reviews identified non-compliance, and the districts received required technical assistance to develop compliant transition plans. While districts have been able to come into compliance as required, districts struggle continuously with maintaining compliance pertaining to transition plans that are a part of the Individualized Education Program (IEPs) as evidenced by the state’s inability to meet the SPP target for the past two years. The FY 2011 SPP has set a target that 80% of youth who had IEPs in effect at the time they left school will, within one year from graduation, be enrolled in postsecondary education or training programs or be competitively employed or in some other employment. The data from the last reporting years have been flat with only about 55% of graduating student with disabilities known to be in post secondary school training placement or employment.
In 2010, the Georgia legislature enacted the BRIDGE law (Building Resourceful Individuals to Develop Georgia’s Economy), which emphasizes college and career readiness and requires that all students in the second semester of the 8th grade have an Individual Graduation Plan (IGP). IGPs closely align with the purposes of transition plans that focus on improving postsecondary outcomes for SWD. Georgia’s proposed efforts in providing technical assistance to noncompliant districts via professional development on writing measurable annual goals, developing Individual Graduation Plans and implementing successful transition programs, will be used in phase one of this three-phase initiative to increase postsecondary outcomes as required under SPP Indicator 14. These efforts will be enhanced by the technical assistance and support provided by the University of Kansas Transition Coalition (See A-53), incorporating the evidence-based practices and predictors, and technical assistance tools [NSTTAC I-13 Checklist, Transition Assessment Toolkit, and Taxonomy for Transition Programming (Kohler)] found on the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center website.
During phases two and three of implementation of Initiative 2, students will participate in ASPIRE (Active Student Participation Inspires Real Engagement), which will actively involve students in goal setting and attainment through student-led IEPs, and will improve college and career readiness through the students’ systematic planning and execution of postsecondary goals and the actions necessary to achieve these goals. Districts will implement C.A.F.E. (Circle of Adults Focused on Education) DIALOGUES targeting transition, which will engage parents of the students being targeted for support, school administrators, teachers and community organizations in understanding and participating in the process of moving students to improved post-school outcomes. A C.A.F.E. is a model of a Community of Practice around dropout prevention issues based on research by the National Dropout Prevention Center on the role of families in keeping students in school and ultimately graduating. The C.A.F.E. DIALOGUE was developed by a Georgia stakeholder team of educators, parents and community members with the leadership of the IDEA Partnership. The goal of a C.A.F.E. DIALOGUE is to create short and long-term solutions to engage families and communities in developing possible solutions to the issues in their schools by identifying factors through a school data drill. The C.A.F.E. model used in Goal 2 will focus on transition issues and practices for SWD. Implementing student-focused planning and family involvement are important evidence-based practices/ predictors of successful post-school outcomes.