Improving Special Education in Prince George’s County Public Schools

MEMORANDUM   TO: Prince George’s County Public Schools Department of Special Education   FROM: Teach Plus-Maryland Teaching Policy Fellows   DATE: July 28, 2016 RE: Improving Special Education in Prince George’s County Public Schools   _________________________________________________________________________________________  

Thank you for considering our ideas for how to improve special education in Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS). We are honored that you sought our feedback and appreciate your consideration of our recommendations. As special educators in PGCPS, we know firsthand just how important it is to ensure that students with disabilities get the quality education they deserve, and we also know the challenges that teachers, schools, and the district face in providing these services. Our recommendations take into consideration our experience in the classroom, exemplary special education models from across the state and country, and national data that reveals an attrition rate that is twice as high among special educators as among general educators. Using this information, in this memo we identify the challenges — including the prioritization of compliance over instructions — and propose opportunities, including new practices, that we believe will improve the achievement of special education students and the retention of special education teachers across Prince George’s County.  

Background on Teach Plus and the Authors The authors of this brief are classroom-based educators in PGCPS and Fellows with the Maryland Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellowship. The mission of Teach Plus is to empower excellent, experienced teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that affect their students’ success. We are a group of PGCPS teachers with a track record of success teaching urban students and a solutions-oriented approach to improving

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public policies that affect them. We believe improvement is necessary in delivering high-quality special education services to close the achievement gap between students with disabilities and their peers.  

Supporting Students with Disabilities The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensures that children with disabilities have equal access to educational opportunities as their same-age peers. The passage of IDEA set high standards for student achievement and created structures for how educational services are provided and evaluated. Despite the hard work of special educators across Prince George’s County, children with disabilities continue to lag behind their peers in multiple indicators of achievement. In order to provide these students with the services they deserve, their teachers require an equitable distribution of work with adequate time to comply with IEP deadlines and, most importantly, in order to meet the instructional needs of learners in the classroom through differentiated lesson plans.  

  Source: 2015 Maryland Report Card, Prince George’s County Public Schools Assessments http://reportcard.msde.maryland.gov/Assessments.aspx?K=16AAAA#ALGEBRAgrade99all

 

ISSUE #1: Time and how it is allocated One of the major challenges for special educators, like all educators, is time. However, for special educators, the need for time comes with higher stakes, as teachers must balance their instructional support of student achievement with the need to complete the compliance activities that carry legal ramifications. At the elementary level, teachers provide direct instruction and complete paperwork. In secondary settings, case

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managers must complete paperwork and hold IEP meetings during their planning periods, thus limiting effective differentiated instruction and their availability for collaborative planning. “As PGCEA Special Education Chair, I hear common stories, from elementary and secondary educators, about the stress and anxiety created by high workload demands and the intense pressure of compliance without adequate time or systemic supports. Our special educators spend hours outside of the workday to complete IEP’s and many use sick days to fulfill workload demands.” -Sheena Washington   Adrienne Pandy, an early career educator who left the district, shared her struggles with workload expectations and time constraints: “This is my 3rd year teaching and I honestly have a passion for teaching special ed. All I have ever wanted to do is teach and I feel like I am unable to do so due to all of the demands... But I don’t think my principal realizes that special education paperwork is a priority; time sensitive; and I have so much to do. He typically says we are given planning time during the school day and after dismissal to work on plans, but my IEP meetings are usually held during this time... I will not be returning to the county next year due to all of the demands and limited understanding. I am drowning.” Some schools in PGCPS engage in innovative plans to build in extra supports for case management time into the year, on a monthly or quarterly basis. At Charles Carroll Middle School, Principal David Curry has steadily increased supports for staff and students by incorporating substitute teachers in his annual budget. This ensures that special educators have time to fulfil both instructional and case management responsibilities with fidelity. Some schools have provided an additional block of daily planning; whereas others have built in one day each month. However, such supports have been left to individual principals to structure, with no requirements or expectation of consistency and are the exception, not the rule.  

RECOMMENDATION #1: Provide Sufficient Teacher Planning Time In order to address the achievement gap in PGCPS, special educators with dual roles as teachers and case managers should be provided with mandated daily planning time. Currently, many of our educators must choose between instructional planning or mandated paperwork during their planning time. We believe that time allocated for instructional planning to differentiate lessons for our diverse students is just as important as time allocated to meet IEP compliance deadlines of assessments, initials, annual reviews, data collection, Medicaid, etc. As this is a negotiation year in which a new contract will be drafted, we ask that the Special Education Director issue a written request to the District Board of Education and contract negotiation members indicating that additional time must be contractually mandated for special educators with dual teaching and case 3    

management responsibilities. This recommendation will ensure that students with disabilities have equitable opportunities to achieve throughout our district by mandating an additional block of daily planning or a one day per month set aside just for case management responsibilities for educators with instructional duties. This model is already being used successfully in the county: “At Charles Carroll Middle School, our principal provided substitute teachers which gave us, special educators, one supplemental compliance day every two months. Eventually, we transitioned to increased supports giving educators one compliance paperwork day every month. The results? Students benefitted from a higher quality of instructional programming, while teachers no longer experienced the rush to complete IEP paperwork. In addition, our Special Education Instructional Specialists (SEIS) often sends the monthly SPED Data Reports to building level administrators and case managers. I have seen the number of expired IEPs decrease drastically”. - Mbulwa Musyoki. “Giving special educators extra time for case management has reduced the number of non-compliance items such as re-evaluations and IEP updates. I would like for there to be more analysis of student goals. In the past we've provided after-school and summer learning opportunities specifically targeting SPED population, provided after-school training (co-Teaching Model etc.). We've purchased support programs I Ready, Compass Learning as some of the resources. We have now purchased a position that will be used to focus on providing interventions and supports for targeted SPED students.” ~ David Curry, Principal, Charles Carroll Middle.  

Additional teacher planning time has the potential to directly reduce the money spent on possible litigation addressing special education non-compliance. More planning time equals more time for teachers to design individualized, coherent instruction, and complete compliance paperwork thoroughly. With these responsibilities covered, teachers can make better use of face time with students. When families are satisfied with student services and progress, they are less likely to pursue legal action against the Local Education Agency. The district should utilize the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Title II funds to pay for additional after-school collaborative planning and co-teaching support with general education teaching partners1.   Some schools seek to address the issue of the educator workload by using school resources to restructure special education positions. For example, Suitland High School created an innovative hybrid position allowing some teachers to complete the majority of the building IEP paperwork, which in turn, allowed the remaining special educators to maximize their time to focus on instruction. The district should encourage innovation by sharing information about diverse models for workload support and by applying for funding through ESSA Title II.                                                                                                               1

The purpose of the Title II program is to increase academic achievement by improving teacher and principal quality. One way it does this is by providing grant funding for professional development for educators.  

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In addition, we recommend that the district address the dual roles of the Special Education Instructional Specialists (SEIS), tasked with providing instructional supports and ensuring compliance within their assigned school buildings, by separating these positions into an Instructional Support Specialist and a Compliance Support Specialist. Due to high workload demands and time limitations, SEIS’s prioritize issues of compliance. Rather than providing classroom instructional support for Universal Design for Learning, collaborative lesson planning, and differentiation strategies to teachers, SEIS’s are often limited to meetings with building level administration about compliance priorities. The district can also support these new positions and expanded supports to our students by accessing ESSA Title II funds and advocating for district budget increases to enhance services to students with disabilities.

ISSUE #2: Personnel and inconsistencies of support systems While PGCPS offers a continuum of special education services and program models for approximately 14,211 students receiving special education services, special educators often lack the supports needed to provide high quality instruction and services to all of these students.

While every building has a special education

chair, this role is structured differently across schools and grade bands. Some department chairs teach full time, some take on student assessment duties to support their teachers, and others do little more than reassign paperwork. This lack of transparency across department organization, including a lack of clear job descriptions with roles and responsibilities, means that while some educators have time during their day to complete compliance work and design instructional lessons that bolster student achievement, some are taxed with work beyond their contractual duty day contributing to attrition, underperformance, non-compliance, and job dissatisfaction. While some schools allocate resources to provide support positions, such as special education secretaries, and crisis response personnel, this support varies by building and is not guaranteed.  

RECOMMENDATION #2: Develop special education teacher leaders We recommend that the PGCPS Special Education Department provide a written request to Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) to include funding for innovative teacher distributed leadership pilot models in their ESSA Title II plan. The distributed leadership model “does not necessarily imply that the entire faculty controls decisions related to the school. Rather, principals create leadership positions that allow capable

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and willing teachers to work in a more focused leadership capacity” (Loeser, 2008, p. 3).2 The practitioners closest to the students should be empowered to work in partnership with the Special Education Department and school building leadership to develop new approaches to educator and student supports. For example, secondary special educators serving in hybrid positions could each develop distinct Universal Design for Learning supports for each content area and grade level, while offering tailored professional development and supports to fellow educators. These positions would allow passionate classroom-based special educators an opportunity to continue teaching, while improving classroom instruction and student learning and achievement at the building and district level.   We strongly recommend that the Special Education Department in collaboration with the Prince George’s County Educators Association, create a Special Education Advisory Council (SEAC) comprised of at least 50% membership from currently teaching or practicing special educators and related service providers. The advisory council should meet on a regular basis (i.e. monthly) to address concerns such as equitable staffing formulas, workload, recruitment, retention, and educator morale. The SEAC would investigate and disseminate best practices in specialized education to improve retention of highly effective special educators and raise student achievement across the district. We recommend that the advisory council consist of special educators from elementary, middle, and high school with four teachers from each content area representing teaching and learning issues.   We also recommend that the SPED department assign SPED mentors for new SPED teachers in the county to provide support and pointers on how to manage and balance caseloads and instruction so as to lower the attrition rate. These mentors would provide coaching and professional development workshops targeted towards closing the achievement gaps. The department should provide support and professional development to building administrators so that they have a clear understanding of the complexity of special education, so that they can help support sped teachers and especially new teachers in the profession.

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 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-­‐leadership/apr10/vol67/num07/When-­‐Teachers-­‐Run-­‐the-­‐School.aspx  

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RECOMMENDATION #3: Update Staffing Formula and Job Descriptions The District Staffing Formula Plan forces educators to prioritize compliance over instruction. The current plan for special educators supporting middle and high school students who are pursuing promotion or diplomas condenses all of the duties required by special educators into one planning period, which is insufficient and must be addressed in order to reduce the resulting non-compliance and litigation the departments face. In some schools, especially secondary schools, with significantly larger populations of students with disabilities, one department chair may not be sufficient. We are also concerned that the current plan only considers a more equitable workload approach for related service providers and not for special education teachers and case managers. The plan must apply this equitable approach to workload of all service providers, direct and indirect. A realistic formula that supports the true nature of the workload is a viable alternative approach to closing the achievement gap among students with disabilities. We recommend that PGCPS, in collaboration with PGCEA and SEAC, provide an updated job description for the various roles that special educators fulfill.

Department chairs, resource teachers, case managers, and teachers with both

instructional and case management responsibilities must have accurate job descriptions that are consistent across the county to ensure that schools in our district have equitable workloads.  

CONCLUSION In order to close the achievement gap for students with disabilities we must move quickly to promote district policies that ensure special educators have adequate time to plan for and deliver high quality specialized instruction. We must provide:   TIME  SUPPORT:   ❖ Adequate time for both instructional planning and case management. PERSONNEL  SUPPORT:   ❖ Opportunities for teacher leadership. ❖ Clearly and reasonably defined professional roles. ❖ SPED mentors for new SPED teachers in the county to support them on managing and balancing caseloads and instruction so as to lower the attrition rate. ❖ Coaching and more professional development workshops targeted towards closing the achievement gap.

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❖ Assistance to SPED chairs who have large SPED populations and programs in their buildings. This would lower the attrition rate among SPED chairs. ❖ Allocation and redistribution of resources so that teachers and students can address academic issues and lower the achievement gap. ❖ Innovative positions in schools with large SPED achievement gaps so as to provide quality instruction. In PGCPS, the ability of a special educator to manage his or her responsibilities is currently at the discretion of the leadership in the building. We suggest that the district promote current and introduce new best practices to all principals and department chairs to ensure that every educator has the tools necessary to meet the needs of all students. When the systems are in place to ensure efficient compliance, kids will win every time.   Signed: Jes Ellis Special Educator, Thomas S. Stone Elementary School Mbulwa Musyoki Special Educator, Charles Carroll Middle School Sarah Mulcany Special Educator, Dodge Park Elementary School Sheena Washington Special Educator, Oxon Hill High School  

           

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