Testimony of Dr. Michelle J. Walker-Davis, Executive Director DC Public Charter School Board

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Testimony of Dr. Michelle J. Walker-Davis, Executive Director DC Public Charter School Board

Testimony of Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis, Executive Director

DC Public Charter School Board Hearing on Special Education

Committee of the Whole

November 20, 2024

Good afternoon Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee of the Whole. I am Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis, the Executive Director of the DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB). I am joined by my colleagues Michele Gray, Director, School Equity and Effectiveness, and Theresa Kemp, Senior Specialist, School Equity and Effectiveness. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today's hearing on Special Education and to discuss DC PCSB's oversight of education for students with disabilities. Today, I will focus on addressing community complaints, our audit and monitoring policy, and how ASPIRE, our academic evaluation system, emphasizes how schools serve students with disabilities.

Reporting Special Education Complaints

I will begin by walking through the steps families and caretakers can take if they have complaints about their child's education related to their disability status. The first stop when families have a concern about their student's education is their teachers and campus leadership. School staff are the most familiar with the specifics of a student's Individual Education Plan (IEP) and the school's instructional approach, which puts them in the best position to address concerns. They are also the ones who hold IEP meetings and can make updates to the IEP if necessary. In most cases, schools are able to address families' concerns without intervention from an agency. In other cases families can register a complaint with the Ombudsperson for Public Education, Office of the State Superintendent, or DC PCSB.

In the few cases when a family comes to DC PCSB with a community complaint about special education, the first step in our process is to speak to the family and get as much information as possible on the student, the school, and previous communication between the family and the school. In the cases where the family has been in communication with the school, but there has been no solution, the family files a community complaint, and DC PCSB lets the school know. It is important to note that we refer special education compliance or due process concerns to OSSE, and encourage families to file Special Education State Complaints since OSSE is the agency ultimately in charge of IDEA compliance.

In most cases when we receive complaints related to special education, families are looking to have an IEP meeting, and our recommendation to the school is to hold the meeting to address the concerns.

DC PCSB will close the community complaint once the school and family come to a resolution on the concern, which is most often resolved in an IEP meeting.

Special Education Audit and Monitoring Policy

The DC PCSB Special Education Audit and Monitoring Policy compliments OSSE's work investigating complaints and ensuring statewide compliance with IDEA. In August 2023, the DC Public Charter School Board approved an update to this policy to focus on school practices which may produce inequitable outcomes for students with disabilities.. In accordance with our policy, we review the following data for each school multiple times a year to see if any campuses are outliers for students with disabilities. We are specifically looking for disproportionality. Those data are:

• Out of school suspensions
• Expulsions
• Lack of required manifestation hearings
• Enrollment (by total population and by IEP level)
• Re-enrollment
• Mid-year withdrawals
• Community Complaints
• Poor performance on a Qualitative Site Review

If the review of the data meets our criteria for an audit, we begin our audit process. We consider outliers (data outside the normal range) - when the data shows students with disabilities to be two to three times out of sync with their peers. For example, if a school suspended students with disabilities at twice the rate of their peers, we would likely begin the audit process. The exact steps of the process depend on the severity of the data outlier.

If a school's disproportionality or other assessment is based on an n size of less than three students, we send a Pre-Audit Warning. This notice to the school will outline any concerns the data surfaced and let the school know that an audit could follow if the data does not show improvement.

In the cases when the data does not improve following Pre-Audit Warnings, or the data reveals three times or greater rate of disproportionality, we move forward with a Special Education Desk Audit. This entails contacting a school's Special Education Director, Executive Director, and Principal requesting specific documentation and asking a series of questions related to how we believe they violated our policy. The school has two weeks to respond to our inquiry. From there, with the data we have and the information from the school's response, we create a formal audit summary. This summary often includes recommendations on best practices to adopt and resources which could support the school to become compliant. We also share the timeline for follow-up and information on how we plan to continue our monitoring.

Following an audit, DC PCSB can intervene further depending on the severity of the findings. These interventions include:

• Recommendations of review and revision of the school's Internal Processes
• Referral to technical assistance from OSSE
• Notice of Concern issued by the DC PCSB Board
• Effective Organization Meeting between DC PCSB and LEA staff members and/or Boards members

Effective Organization Meetings are a routine, additional step our staff and Board take when we have data concerns. In these meetings, we meet with school leadership and/or members of an LEA's board to discuss our concerns, hear directly from them how they plan to make improvements and offer recommendations from DC PCSB staff. If improvement does not follow one of these meetings, our staff will often recommend another intervention to our Board.

ASPIRE

Lastly, the foundation of all of our work in service of students is ASPIRE. We know that in DC, and nationally, we need to focus on the achievement and growth of our students furthest from opportunity, and this includes students with disabilities. Given this need, we will disaggregate most academic and school culture measures by student groups and calculate schools' performance by weighting each student group's outcomes. It is not enough for a school to serve most of their students well, they must serve all of their students well, including those with disabilities. By disaggregating achievement, growth, and climate outcomes, we will be able to see which campuses have success with their students with disabilities, and where schools and the city need to improve.

Conclusion

Thank you for allowing me to testify and speak to DC PCSB's oversight practices for special education today. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.