Special Education in the Baltimore City High Schools: Perspectives, Challenges, Recommendations At stake: the education due every student; the taxpayers’ dollars to support it; the viability of Baltimore City’s work force PUBLISHED BY The Abell Foundation 111 S. Calvert Street, Suite 2300 Baltimore, Maryland 21202 www.abell.org DECEMBER 2005 Table of Contents Executive Summary.............................................................................................................. 2 Chapter 1. Introduction....................................................................................................... 5 Methodology..................................................................................................................... 5 Structure of the Report ...................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2. Location and Inclusion of Students with Disabilities ....................................... 8 Students with Disabilities—One Term for Many Different Students.................................. 8 Distribution of Students with Disabilities across Schools .................................................. 9 Inclusion of Students with Disabilities .............................................................................. 11 Chapter 3. Student Achievement......................................................................................... 16 Attendance........................................................................................................................ 17 Graduation and Dropout Rates .......................................................................................... 19 Statewide Testing Programs .............................................................................................. 20 Chapter 4. Vaughn G. Outcomes ........................................................................................ 31 Chapter 5. Instructional Practices and IEPs ...................................................................... 35 Instructional Models.......................................................................................................... 35 Co-teaching....................................................................................................................... 36 Reading and Mathematics Instruction................................................................................ 38 School Climate and Reactions to Inclusion........................................................................ 41 IEPs and Other Paperwork ................................................................................................ 43 Budget Cuts ...................................................................................................................... 46 Chapter 6. Staffing, Professional Development, and Planning Time................................. 47 Staffing ............................................................................................................................. 47 Professional Development and Common Planning Time ................................................... 51 Chapter 7. Transitioning and Career and Technical Education........................................ 55 The Transition from Middle School to High School .......................................................... 55 Planning for and Enrollment of Students with Disabilities in High Schools ....................... 56 High School to Postsecondary Life.................................................................................... 60 Chapter 8. Recommendations ............................................................................................. 64 Chapter 9. Concluding Thoughts ........................................................................................ 72 Appendices ............................................................................................................................ 74 1 Executive Summary The long-standing focus on compliance with special education mandates in the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) is necessary, but compliance alone will not be enough to improve achievement for the city’s students with disabilities. More attention, time, and resources must be devoted to teaching, learning, and instruction; determining whether the city’s current reform efforts are benefiting students with disabilities; and exploring additional programs to help these students. These concerns are pressing: starting with this year’s freshman who must pass Maryland’s new High School Assessments (HSA) in order to graduate, the majority of Baltimore’s students with disabilities who would otherwise graduate may be denied diplomas. This report examines how well students with disabilities are being incorporated and served by the different types of high schools in the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS), especially the new Innovation and restructured high schools, and identifies strategies and programs the district may wish to explore. While there are some differences among types of high schools, there are far more similarities, both in terms of achievement and needs. After years of imposed solutions, controversy, waxing and waning vigilance, finger-pointing, political battles, good intentions, and hard work, special education at the high school level in Baltimore remains in need of significant assistance and improvement. BCPSS high school special education students’ are included in general education classrooms at much higher rates than are elementary or middle school students. It is unclear why high schools’ inclusion rates are higher and whether this benefits special education students, since BCPSS school level staff report a lack of preparation for inclusion. While special education students are included at high rates into regular education classrooms, special education students are unequally integrated into the different types of high schools in the city. Special education students are relatively underrepresented in the new Innovation high schools, and these students continue to make up a small proportion of students in the city’s vo-tech high schools. Attendance and some standardized test scores have improved for high school students in special education, but a great deal of work remains to be done. Only a third of special education seniors graduated in 2005, compared to almost two thirds of regular education students. Two percent or less of special education students passed either the algebra or English II High School Assessments (HSA). In addition, the gaps between the performance of special education students and that of regular education students have not closed or are growing wider. Not surprisingly, large gaps between the achievement of regular education and special education students are the norm in urban school districts; no large urban school districts are doing a significantly better job of educating high school students with disabilities than is Baltimore. For example, while roughly 37% more regular education students than special education students in Baltimore passed the English graduation test, the comparable figure is 46% in Boston, 41% in Cleveland, and 38% in Oakland. Yet there is no denying that not enough is being done for the city’s special education students. The data and interviews with BCPSS high school staff reported on here suggest an urgent need for more and better professional development for special and regular education teachers, additional qualified staff and service providers, a better student assignment process, wider adoption of research based programs in reading and math, and better preparation for students for life after high school. For example, 2 • BCPSS school staff reported that they often choose certain instructional practices because they don’t have the training or resources to do what they believe would be best for children; they often do not know which teaching models and programs in math and reading have shown to be effective; and the district’s focus on inclusion limits their ability to use pullouts and self-contained classrooms when appropriate. • While BCPSS staff were supportive of the idea of inclusion, they said that there were insufficient resources and staff training for the student inclusion model, and they were concerned about additional behavior management problems due to inclusion. • Staff at schools believe that Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and other paperwork requirements are repetitive, too time-consuming, and ultimately not very useful documents. The problems suggest that staff need better information about the availability of services, more extensive training on IEP documentation, and a new understanding of the rationales for required paperwork. • The problems caused by staff shortages are compounded by the difficulty in finding special education staff with a broad range of content knowledge, high teacher turnover, and absenteeism. BCPSS’ staffing plan may also be contributing to the problem. Of the 15 BCPSS high schools with 50 or fewer special education students, 10 have only a half- time or one full-time special education teacher. • In several BCPSS high schools, interactions between regular and special education teachers geared toward improving instruction seem limited to classroom visits by special educators once or twice a week and meetings as needed. Most school staff thought that this was insufficient and that there should be more collaboration school-wide and especially between special educators