The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Board of Education has been over-identifying minority students as having learning disabilities prompting approval of a new plan that identifies the causes of the disproportionately while working to prevent the problem from recurring.
During the Nov. 16 meeting, the board discussed and unanimously approved the adoption of a plan to address the district’s disproportionate identification of Latinx and Hispanic students for special education based on learning disability. The California Department of Education has found that the district was "significantly" disproportionate in this category from the 2019-20 school year through the 2021-22 school year, prompting the district’s "Dispro Core Team" to identify root causes as to why it is occurring.
Disproportionality in this case is defined as "the overrepresentation of a specific race or ethnicity" identified in one or more of: identification of a disability in general, identification of a specific race or ethnicity in a specific disability category, discipline and placement. While the 2022-23 school year was no longer within a "risk ratio" for identifying Latinx and Hispanic students as having a Specific Learning Disability, the "risk ratio" for the district is a 3.0, meaning that Latinx and Hispanic students are three times more likely to be identified in the disability categories.
Even though the district fell below the "risk ratio" in the prior school year, the district still aims to implement a plan to address over-identification, using findings from special education data, as well as parent and staff surveys to guide thinking on the issue. SMMUSD Special Education Director Victoria Hurst said that disproportionality is "not a special education issue," but a "general education issue that we are all working together to help solve in order to help benefit all of our students."
From the findings, the "Dispro Core Team" identified three root causes of disproportionality. The first is what is called a "lack of clarity, communication and understanding" of the districtwide support system framework, the second is "inconsistent implementation" of the district’s English Language Arts program, and the third is a "lack of cultural awareness and cultural competency" regarding inclusion and relationship-building with parents and students.
A general education intervention plan will have a focus population within two SMMUSD campuses, Will Rogers Learning Academy and Grant Elementary School, chosen due to a high amount of students identified as within the group and a high amount of learning disability students. The intervention will focus on lowering the amount of students that would need to be referred to special education, aiming to curb the bulk of students identified for special education in grades TK-3. Hurst noted that Will Rogers and Grant being selected for the focus population doesn’t mean anything "negative" is happening at the specific school sites, but that the district cannot track everyone when focusing on present and future plan implementation.
To reach its goals, the district will provide professional development on instructional practices to be used with students in classrooms, use bilingual school psychologists to teach school sites how to tell the difference between language development and learning differences, and implement foundational skills programs in grades K-2nd.
The district will use a new program to decrease the amount of students in the category of "urgent intervention" on standardized assessments by 10% by June 2024. The program will focus on language development, and teachers will implement 30 minutes per day of designated instructional time as part of the program.
"As we look to strengthen [our program] and build coherence around that, we’re not only supporting our Hispanic subgroup, we’re supporting all kids," said SMMUSD Executive Director of Elementary Schools Dr. Steven Richardson. "By doing that, we’re also going to relieve some of the tensions put on special [education] when we’re overidentifying kids. It stretches them very thin when we have a risk ratio factor that’s high for any subgroup."
To fight any potential lack of cultural awareness and competency, the plan also calls for providing restorative justice training to enhance district-wide inclusion. The training will be given to Will Rogers and Grant staff to make students in the focus population "feel safe," Richardson noted.
The plan has a budget allocation of approximately $346,000, equal to 15% of federal special education funds from Resource Codes 3310 and 3315. The allocation will be used for teacher training, after-school hours for teachers, training of classified staff on intervention programs, as well as the cost of instructional materials.
Board members noted that this is an issue they have been looking at for a while, and SMMUSD Superintendent Dr. Antonio Shelton added that this is a "learning opportunity" for the district to "address concerns" for a "pocket" of students that are "not achieving where we know they can achieve."
"It’s clear that what [the plan is] doing is really important, and while it’s almost a pilot [program] … it really has much broader significance," added board member Laurie Lieberman. "I love that it’s being done [this way], because I think you’ll work out the kinks, see what works and what doesn’t work."
