Transcript No Slide Title

Data Driven Decision Making: A systems approach to
Disproportionality
Alfredo J. Artiles, Arizona State University
Teresa Dais, North Carolina Department of Education
Elizabeth Kozleski, University of Colorado at Denver & Health Sciences Center
Agenda
• Introductions (20 minutes)
• Case story from NC (20 minutes)
• NCCRESt TA model (30 minutes)
• Multilevel data discussion - (30minutes)
• How does culture, race and equity complicate the
conversation? (40 minutes)
• Examine your model of TA/Leadership/PL - (30
minutes)
Introductions
• What roles do you play in education? (chart paper)
• What do you hope to learn this afternoon? (chart
paper)
• What state/territory do you live in?
• What is your model for providing technical
assistance/leadership/professional development? (at
your table)
What is Disproportionality?
The over or under-identification of students in
some racial/ethnic and/or language groups for
services in special education
Why should we pay attention to
disproportionality?
If IDEA provides extra resources and the right to a
more individualized education program, why
would one consider disproportionate
representation of minority children a problem
(Dononvan & Cross, 2002, 2)?
The Cost of a Label
The answer, as every parent of a child receiving special
education services knows, is that in order to be eligible for the
additional resources a child must be labeled as having a
disability, a label that signals substandard performance. And
while that label is intended to bring additional supports, it
may also bring lowered expectations on the part of teachers,
other children, and the identified student. When a child
cannot learn without the additional supports, and when the
supports improve outcomes for the child, that trade-off may
well be worth making. But, because there is a trade-off, both
the need and the benefit should be established before the label
and the cost are imposed (Donovan & Cross, 2002, 3).
Considerations
• Special Education may not provide the supports that a
student needs
• Disability label may stigmatize a student as inferior
–
–
–
–
Results in lowered expectations
Potentially separates the student from peers
May lead to poor educational and life outcomes
Students may be denied access to the general education
curriculum
– May result in dropout
• Students may be misunderstood or underserved in General
Education
What is NCCRESt doing?
Provides technical assistance and
professional development to
– close the achievement gap between
students from culturally and linguistically
diverse backgrounds and their peers, and
– reduce inappropriate referrals to special
education.
The NCCRESt Response
• A TA & D Center focused on equity, access, participation
in GENERAL education.
– Professional Development
• Practitioners, School Leaders, District and State PD and TA
providers
– Technical Assistance
• Information Systems
– GIS Maps to tell the story
– On-line Learning Communities to build the Networks
– Teleconferences to engage educational communities
• Product Development
– Practitioner Briefs
– Assessment Tool
– Articles and journal issues targeting the Research Community
The North Carolina Story
Teresa Dais
Data! Data! Data!
In the Past
Help! Help! Help!!
Rescue
Method of Rescue
LEVELS OF SIGNIFICANCE
R
I
S
K
R
A
T
I
O
≥3
Focused Record Review
Professional Development
Technical Assistance
1 to < 3
Desk Audit
<1
Letter
State, Regional &
Local
Monitoring Staff
SEA Staff
LEA-Level
Disproportionality
Task Force
Continuous Improvement
Performance Plan
Associate
Superintendent
Curriculum and School
Reform Services
Process for Addressing Disproportionality
Intensive Intervention
Risk Analysis
Goals and Purpose
Risk
Ratio
Focused
Record
Review
(PD/TA)
Study / Reflect /
Evaluate Interventions
Modify Actions Based on New Knowledge
Evaluate the
Effectiveness of
Interventions
Provide Intensive Intervention
(PD/TA) to school systems in
Focused Record Review and Desk
Audit Phases
December 1, 2004 Child Count &
2005 Statistical Profile (Pupils in Membership)
Continuous
Process
Conduct Focused Record Review
In school systems in succession
from greatest to least
“Risk Ratio”
Use Risk Analysis to determine school
systems with significant disproportionality
based on Risk Ratio
Note: Design deviated from Art
Costa & Benakallick Habits of
Modify Actions Based
on New Knowledge
Relationships are the Key
NCDPI Promising Practices
•Positive Behavior Support
•Instructional Consultation
•Response to Intervention/ Problem Solving
Model
•Reading/Writing & Math Best Practice Sites
•Early Literacy Best Practice Sites
•Project Bright Idea (AIG)
On Board
Group Discussion
•
•
•
What did you hear?
What lessons did you learn?
How do they jibe with your model?
A Framework for TA and PL
NCCRESt Design of TA & PL
•Design of our TA model and a set of
artifacts created to mediate the work of
SEA personnel to address
disproportionality.
1. Critique of past work on disproportionality
2. NCCRESt Response: Create mediating structures
for TA and PL
Critique:
Culture & Space in Disproportionality
1.) Analytic focus: Physical dimensions of space (placement in sped
programs).
2.) Culture is ignored
– when included: student traits (i.e., ethnic or linguistic background) or
individuals’ psyches (e.g., beliefs, learning styles) (Artiles, 2003).
– School cultures (including professional practices) are ignored.
3.) The perspective of the analyst is invisible
- Researchers’ assumptions about culture and space
- Explanations of the problem that guide researchers’ meaning making
processes or analytical decisions.
Critique: The Object of SEA work
• SEA Perspective: Macro view of professional
practice-- “The view from above.”
– Compliance and monitoring
– Aggregated data: State placement patterns,
school district data, evidence from clusters of
schools in cities or regions.
“The view from above”
• Traditional artifacts: Proportion tables (disability
placement by ethnicity)
– Connections between technical, historical, & cultural
factors?
– Ideological and semiotic underpinnings of professional
practices? Examples include
• data interpretation and decision-making grounded in individualbased assumptions about disability and culture
• use of information infrastructures without regard for the nature and
premises of databases (e.g., categorical, cross-sectional, fossilized
culture).
NCCREST Response
Technical assistance as mediating structure
•Create mediating contexts to support
SEA/LEA personnel learning about
disproportionality.
•Activity system is the unit of analysis.
– Individual mediation and institutional contexts
Technical Assistance Activity as Mediating Structure
Artifacts
• GIS Maps
• Databases
• Discourse
• Theoretical constructs on the cultural
nature of learning
Object
Subject
Disproportionality of
minority
students in
special
education
SEA Team
Rules
1. Commitment to all learners in the
activity system.
2. Agreement to engage in technical,
practical, and critical reflection and
discourse about the role of culture in
learning.
3. Commitment to view
contradictions and disruptions as
opportunities for growth.
Community
SEA: General education, special
education, and professional
development groups.
LEA: Administrators, students
teachers/interns, families.
Division
of Labor
•Vertical
•Horizontal
•Dynamic/lateral
Outcomes
•
Culturally responsive
educational system
TA as Mediating Structure
Forging New Spaces
1. Physical space and its intersection with cultural
practices
• Artifact design: Material and psychological
(Blanton et al., 1998).
– Maps and databases; beliefs and
assumptions
• Culture: Historical, instrumental, situated
TA as Mediating Structure
Forging New Spaces
2. Social spaces and the production of conceived
spaces
• Discursive and cognitive practices used in TA
and PL activities/sessions
Artifact Design for Systemic Change:
Toward a cartography of disproportionality
Create new perceptual fields with visual
representations “where space is used to represent
a spatial dispersion that offers, when combined
with discourse analysis, a system of possibility
for new knowledge (Paulston, 1996, p. 4,
emphasis in original).
Artifact Design for Systemic Change
•Re-present placement evidence as
embedded in grids of cultural, temporal,
and spatial vectors.
•Re-mediate the state leadership’s ways of
analyzing and interpreting the problem
with a new kind of evidence in the
context of TA practices.
Artifact design for systemic change:
GIS Maps & Databases
1.
Physical space and its intersection with cultural practices
- Multiple levels, representation systems, and perspectives
•
Multiple levels: Placement patterns at national, regional, state,
and city levels
–
To witness the metamorphosis of disproportionality across
levels enable SEA personnel to shift their analytic gaze from the
view from above to local landscapes around a city
Artifact design for systemic change:
GIS Maps & Databases
• Multiple representation systems: Interface with databases
– Colors, icons and areas; numbers, trends
• Multiple perspectives
– From a state overall status to the possibility to stand inside
the map of a school
Producing Social &
Conceived Spaces
• Discursive and cognitive practices
– Examine assumptions about the intersection of race, class, ability,
& culture in classrooms
• Rubric Development for LEA Monitoring and Problem Solving
• Discussion of Practitioner Briefs
• Analysis of Leadership Academies
• From personal experience to theoretical sense-making
– Examination of personal and professional identities and how they
mediate practice
• Modeling Distributed Expertise
– Network Development among states
b) Deepen teams’
understanding of the
problem
c) Identify features
of good solutions
d) Self-evaluation and
setting the stage
e) Develop an
action plan
a) Define the
problem
Gauge impact of systems
change efforts
Assess Needs &
Create Action Plans
Cycles of Inquiry,
Reflection, &
Action
Implement Action Plans &
Establish Feedback Loops
In summary
1. Connect Place & Practice
– Understand intersections physical space & professional
practices
• Artifact design: Multiple levels, presentation systems, and perspectives
2. Complicate Culture: Instrumental, historical
3. Engineer Social Spaces
– Discursive and cognitive practices: re-mediate analysis and
practices: Features?
– Negotiate conceived spaces: Visions of a better future
What does this model mean for your work?
• What are your
–
–
–
–
–
–
Artifacts?
Outcomes?
Division of labor?
Community?
Rules?
Participants/Leaders?
• What elements do you
have and understand?
• What is missing?
How can data help us to engage
our audiences?
Questions to Answer
•
•
•
•
•
•
What do you predict?
What do you notice?
What patterns do you see?
What questions do these data create?
What needs to be answered?
What does this mean about
– TA, Professional Learning, Policy Agendas?
• Who needs to be engaged?
• How?
Data Driven Dialogue
• Were there differences in your predictions and
the data?
• What assumptions under girded your
predictions?
• What are plausible reasons for the data as it
is?
• Which of these is worth exploring?
• Why?
NCCRESt Data Manager
1. www.nccrest.org
2. Click data manager
How does race, culture and equity complicate
the work?
• For whom and how?
• What does the North Carolina story tell us
about moving forward?
TA Strategy
• Build State Capacity to Provide TA
and PD
• Build skill sets at SEA Level
• Work in teams that cut across SEA,
Advocacy & District personnel
• Identify districts that are
improving and build strategies to
support their work
• Identify districts that are
developing and build capacity
People
Practices
Policies
TA Delivery Model
.
FEW
9 states
SOME
Partnerships w/
RRCs & TA Centers
Annual National
Forum on
Disproportionality
ALL
E-News, Website,
publications/products
NCCRESt State Partners
Wisconsin
Iowa
Ohio
Connecticut
New
Jersey
Virginia
North
Carolina
Louisiana
Tennessee
How do your partnerships strengthen
will and organize the work?
What events & what follow up?
• Conferences
• On-line dialogue
• Regional Meetings
• On-line information
• Newsletters
• Professional Organization Collaborations
• Work with the media
• Clear messages, clear accountability, clear tactics
Factors that influence capacity
– Policy Environment
– Resource Allocation
– State Personnel
– Information Systems
– Linking Organizations
– Programs and Projects
Investing in People
• Presence
• Participation
• Empowerment
Renewing Practice
• Discourse
• Tools
• Evidence
• Collaboration
Changing Policies
• Educate
• Inform
• Emancipate
• Create Access
Changing Current Realities
Essential change strategies include:
• Understanding the data
• Focus on classroom practices
• Whole School Improvement
• Professional Development
• Technical Assistance
• Networks of Schools on the Move
• Policy Review, Tuning and Reform
Your TA efforts
• What seems solid?
• What are alternative models?
• How do current contexts impact your
modeling?
• What would you like to propose?
• What would be the dangers in doing so?
Conclusion
“We must change the way we think
about ability, competence and success
and encourage schools to redefine
support so that the need to sort children
is reduced.” (Testimony before the President’s Commission,
2002)
www.nccrest.org