November 2018
Earlier this fall, Johnny W. Collett, Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) at the U.S. Department of Education, announced plans to take up an aggressive effort to "Rethink Special Education."
"Rethinking special education will require an unwavering commitment to address barriers that stand in the way of improving opportunities and outcomes for each child, and to make needed changes at the federal, state, and local levels. We must be willing to confront anything that does not facilitate needed improvement," said Collett. Read more here.
Following his announcement, OSERS released a "framework" to structure the efforts.
First up, OSERS wants to examine the current system of Results-Driven Accountability (RDA) including State Performance Plans/Annual Performance Reports (SPP/APRs), State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP; Indicators B-17 and C-11), Annual State Determinations process and Differentiated Monitoring and Support (DMS). (An overview of RDA can be found in Section III of the 40th Annual Report to Congress (PDF, 328 pgs).
To help inform this effort, The Advocacy Institute has compiled a report on Results-Driven Accountability (RDA) specifically focused on the use of results data in making Annual State Determinations.
The new report, "Results Driven Accountability Needs Substantial Intervention," details what's working and not working after five years of RDA-based state determinations.
As the report points out, state performance that includes results for students with disabilities has not shown the same rate of improvement as was shown in compliance prior to RDA. See chart below.
Review our report and join the discussion. Submit your comments/input to RethinkRDA@ed.gov by Dec. 21, 2018. The work has just begun!
The Advocacy Institute full comments submitted to OSERS are available here (PDF, 16 pgs).
Read comments submitted by our colleagues:
Also of interest: Federal Monitoring and Enforcement of IDEA Compliance, National Council on Disability, 2018.
