After entering a voluntary agreement with Stetson and Associates to have the district’s special education programs evaluated, the Pilot Point School board heard a report from Dr. Paula Walker with Stetson and Associates during its March 5 meeting.
Walker explained she led a multimonth investigation looking at criteria from resource allocation to compliance and others before presenting her findings.
“When we do an evaluation, we’re very comprehensive,” Walker said. “We like to not just look at hardcore data, how students did on state mandated assessments, because, especially with children with disabilities, they perform at all different levels.”
Walker’s experience includes 17 years as a special education administrator as well as 10 years at Stetson.
“As we went through the district and met with different groups, I made sure to let them know that this was not something the district was forced to do by TEA, this was actually something it did to improve and look at what it could do better,” Walker said. “You should be commended for that because it took a lot of time, effort and collaboration with campuses and different staff members because everyone was allowed to give input.”
The work included a comparison with six comparable districts, interviews with staff at several levels, focus group sessions, classroom observation, a look at some student’s folders and a survey to staff as well as parents.
“Though Pilot Point supports a district culture that is inclusive and supportive of all students, there is some need for improvement in the area of making sure we’re all doing the same thing and are consistent across the district,” Walker said.
Pilot Point’s particular need for improvement, though she had recommendations for improvement in all areas, showed most clearly in the students’ performance on state mandated tests.
“Although the performance of special education students on state mandated assessments has improved, in some areas, the scores still don’t meet the state standard and, in some areas, have actually regressed,” Walker said.
This again showed during her compliance assessment using statistics on a scale of 0-4, with higher numbers being worse.
“You scored a 0 in seven of the 28 areas that are rated,” Walker said. “The other areas you received the most scores above a 0, which is not as good, are all related to STAAR—some of those scores are 3’s and 4’s,” Walker said.
Walker left the district with recommendations in each area. Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Alicia Bonnett followed to present actionable steps the staff plan to take fol- lowing the review.
“You’ll notice the STAAR, discipline and staffing are kind of our heaviest hitters, so we hit the ground running as soon as we got these reports and our principals brought a team the last two days, and we were in here ... with Dr. Walker really going through step one of the training, taking a deep dive into what resources we have and what our student’s needs are,” Bonnett said.
She said individual campus training will be next, followed by whole district training on building a foundation of inclusion for special ed students.
“We’re also going to be looking at some additional onsite support throughout the year next year as a launching pad for that,” Bonnett said.
