Wake school board members Tuesday questioned how the district would pull off an ambitious proposed academic improvement plan for special education, which would require significant training and a shift in responsibilities.
Most Wake students with disabilities aren't passing their state standardized tests, and Wake school leaders want to change that.
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School district leaders are working on a three- to five-year plan to improve the academic performance of students with disabilities.
The district has more than 19,000 students with disabilities, and only 16.7% of them are proficient on their non-alternate standardized tests, which are general standardized tests given to all students in a grade, according to the Wake County Public School System.
Wake County Schools' three-to-five-year plan would require special education leadership to spend more time focusing on instructional quality for the students and less on managing paperwork and compliance. It would also shift students with disabilities toward spending more time receiving instruction from general education teachers for core instruction.
To accomplish these things, the plan notes that the district will provide additional training for general education teachers and improved scheduling to make sure services are delivered. It specifically notes that adding staff members isn't part of the solution, contending that adding people creates confusion and distances students from their teachers.
On Tuesday, school board members were concerned about how the plans would be implemented and about how teachers and families would be consulted.
"I think there's a level of trust that has been broken with the special educators," Board Member Christina Gordon said. She referred to recent proposals and decisions, including a board-rejected district proposal to cut 130 special education teachers to save $18 million. In response to that proposal this past March, parents and educators pushed back and said special education was actually underfunded.
The Wake chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators called special education in Wake "a crisis" and made several demands to increase staffing and add extra pay. They drew dozens of teachers to a school board meeting in April to talk about how many dozens of hundreds of hours their special education teams work outside of the normal school day in any given week.
Not meeting their demands also contributed to the distrust, Board Member Lynn Edmonds said.
Superintendent Robert Taylor said many of the demands were unaffordable, such as adding a case manager at every school, likely to cost $20 million.
Board members urged the district to include teachers and parents in the planning process and collect feedback from them.
Allred said she would work with her team on a plan to engage teachers. The district started listening sessions with families of students with disabilities earlier this summer.
"Special educators are feeling like they are not being heard," Gordon said.
Making it work
Part of the plan hinges on students with disabilities getting their required accommodations without interrupting their core instructional classes or lessons, such as math and reading.
The district plans to ensure this by improving scheduling. This would happen by considering the scheduling needs of special education students first, rather than after courses have already been scheduled.
Another major element is making sure general education teachers are prepared to consistently work directly with students with disabilities.
The district wants to make sure general education teachers are the ones providing core instruction first to all students, including students with disabilities. If any students with disabilities need extra help, the general education teacher is also the one who should provide that, Allred said. The special education teacher should be there to support students but shouldn't be the one required to teach core subjects to them, she said.
"Special ed teachers aren't trained, nor should they be assuming the responsibility for all of that," Allred said.
Strong core instruction is necessary, she said. "We can't intervene our way out of poor core [instruction]."
Too often, Taylor said, teaching students with disabilities in the general education classroom is offloaded to the special education teacher.
Taylor and board members noted the proposed changes would be significant.
"It is the mind shift that I think is going to be the most difficult for us," Taylor said.
On Tuesday, the Wake NCAE called the plan "wishful thinking" and said it would overburden general education teachers.
All general education teachers should be well-versed in working with students with disabilities, Wake NCAE President Anna Grant said in a statement. But the plan places a high value on training, rather than on making sure enough people are available to help children.
"For a department trying to cut costs, it may be convenient to adopt a philosophy that special needs students actually don’t need additional staff or separate programs," Grant said. "But research shows that smaller class sizes are critical for student success."
Parent and advocate Susan Book, whose son has autism, told WRAL News her son has succeeded in those team-taught classes.
But she questions whether Wake can meaningfully improve academic outcomes without adding resources, which she said are already lacking.
If Wake wants more students with disabilities to receive instruction from a general education teacher, Book thinks they'll need more resources.
"I hope our school board continues to fight for our students with disabilities with all that they have," Book said. "I need to see pushback on plans that would eliminate or cut budgets for special education. I need a board who does believe that our students with disabilities are worth it."
A larger overhaul of special education
The plan is just one element of a larger overhaul of special education programming in the district, as many people in the school community have expressed concerns about services and federal reports have faulted the district for things like taking too long to evaluate a student for special education.
Four years ago, an education consulting firm outlined major issues in the district's special education programming, including staff training, poorly defined staff roles and problematic communication with parents. The district, under new Assistant Superintendent for Special Education Services Lisa Allred, started its overhaul last year.
The district, like others across North Carolina and the country, has long struggled more to hire special education teachers than general education teachers.
Plan comes after proposed special education cuts
The proposal comes six months after the district attempted to lay off more than 100 special education teachers to save money, but quickly backed off of the proposal after school, community and school board pushback. Since then, district leaders have warned of upcoming budget shortfalls in special education created by the end of one-time federal grants.
Meanwhile, Wake NCAE has asked for more special education staff and additional pay for them, arguing that current staff are working numerous hours every week outside of the normal school day in an attempt to get all of their work done. The group has called special education a "crisis."
While the district didn't lay off any special education teachers, it made other structural changes to special education.
It ended its cross-categorical kindergarten program, which provided extra support for some kindergarteners with disabilities as they transitioned into an all-day school environment. At the time, leaders said the general education classroom was the best place for those children, not the separate cross-categorical kindergarten classroom. Federal special education laws require students to be in their "least restrictive environment" as much as possible.
Some former cross-categorical kindergarten parents have disagreed with the decision, coming to school board meetings to talk about the positive difference they believed the class made for their children. The district repurposed those teachers into other special education roles this fall.
Earlier this year, Allred outlined some changes designed to address student behavior and help kindergarteners with disabilities. Those included training two kindergarten teachers at each school on working with students with complex behavioral needs and training all instructional assistants on interventions. Some schools would get training on de-escalating behavioral issues.
Some parents have argued for better early detection of stress in children to prevent behavior from escalating in the first place.
History of academic gaps
Students can enter special education for a variety of disabilities, as long as they are shown to negatively affect the student's academic performance. That negative impact isn't necessarily measured by whether they are passing those standardized tests. The impact is relative to their academic potential.
About a third of all special education students in North Carolina have a specific learning disability, state Department of Public Instruction data show, and many of those are for things like dyslexia and dyscalculia, which impact a student's ability to succeed in English and math courses. That's the biggest disability category by far. State data show that few of those students test at grade level in reading, math or science.
Many parents of children with dyslexia have long complained about insufficient services in North Carolina schools and argue their children could be on grade level or even better with the right interventions, often paying out of their own pockets for private tutoring instead.
In Wake County, this past spring, one in five to one-third of students with disabilities tested proficiently on most of their standardized exams. Those results included children who took alternate exams designed for students with more severe disabilities. Those results were a little better than the statewide results for students with disabilities.
Information for this article was contributed by WRAL reporter Avery Davis.