Audit: Special education in Houston ISD still lags
Despite changes, report cites short staffing, failure to identify students who need services
Houston ISD still struggles to provide adequate special education to students despite changes made after a 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation found the district systematically denied services to hundreds of students at the state’s behest, according to an outside audit.
Among the most problematic areas, the auditors said, the district continues to fall short when it comes to identifying students in need of special education services, does not adequately tailor Individual Education Plans to fit students’ specific needs and lacks enough qualified special education staff. The 133-page report by the American
Institutes for Research, released Thursday, also faulted the district for a lack of data-driven decision-making and criticized its communication of new policies and procedures. In all, the auditors identified 10 areas in which the district needs to improve its special education services.
One of the most glaring findings was that the district is well shy of the recommended number of school psychologists. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends one psychologist per 500 to 700 students. HISD has only one psychologist
per 5,385 students.
The auditors also found evidence that staff at 13 of 27 schools were told that students must undergo a new set of education teaching techniques, called an RTI, before they could be tested for special education services, a procedure that violates federal orders.
They also said teachers complained that the process for identifying students in need of special education services was slowed by complex paperwork, and found several instances in which Individual Education Plans, or IEPs, appeared to be copied from other documents.
The audit was presented to HISD’s Board of Education at its monthly board meeting Thursday.
Trustee Wanda Adams asked Allison Gandhi, a managing researcher with AIR, how she would rate HISD’s special education department on a scale of one to five — with one being the worst — compared to other districts nationwide.
“I would say against an ideal scenario, one,” Gandhi said. “But against similar districts you’re a three. You’re so large, you have budget issues, you have pressure from the TEA. That would make me contextualize it.”
‘Really hit home’
Trustees expressed support for the audit’s findings and urged each other to make funding and changing special education a board priority.
“I think this review, the findings, the recommendations really hit home,” said Trustee Anne Sung, who has served as the chairwoman of a special education ad hoc committee since spring 2017. “I think that it’s very important for us as a board to take these recommendations, to listen to the plan administration is working on and to begin to monitor progress on these things.”
The audit largely corroborated the findings of the Houston Chronicle’s 2016 investigation into the department.
The HISD board agreed to pay AIR $300,000 for the audit in April 2017, months after the Chronicle investigation revealed that Texas systematically denied special education services to thousands of eligible students. HISD’s special education director resigned in March 2017 following allegations that the state’s largest school system embraced a controversial policy that effectively capped the percentage of students receiving services at 8.5 percent.
HISD slashed hundreds of positions from its special education department, dissuaded evaluators from diagnosing disabilities until second grade and created a list of “exclusionary factors” that disqualify students from getting services, among other tactics. As a result, only 7.3 percent of HISD students received special education services in 2016-2017, compared with the national average of 13 percent.
The number of students receiving special education services in HISD has remained virtually unchanged.
Last school year, 15,487 students in Texas’ largest school district were classified as having disabilities. This year, 15,435 were identified by December.
Academic progress for special education students also appears to have remained stagnant, even as the rate of HISD’s general education students passing the state’s standardized tests has improved.
Over the past five years, AIR researchers found that the passing rate for special ed students has remained about 10 percent.
Clear expectations
The lack of academic progress is familiar to Shana Halvorsen, whose daughter struggled in a Houston ISD school before Halvorsen removed her from the campus.
“When we came here a few years ago, she completed first grade reading and (was) doing math on a kindergarten level,” Halvorsen said. “Now, she’s in fourth grade, and she’s still on a kindergarten level.”
In January, Superintendent Richard Carranza said HISD’s special education department had been reorganized to create more efficient communication and to codify practices.
The department’s assessments and intervention teams are now combined.
The district updated its special education manual, and district officials have trained teachers, principals, counselors and special education staff on those standardized practices.
Among the most emphasized changes, he said, was that schools no longer may use RTI before testing a student for disabilities.
“We tried to make very clear what the expectations, policies and procedures are so that it doesn’t leave room for interpretation,” Carranza said.
Interpretation of the district’s special education policies and procedures, however, continues to vary widely across the district, AIR associates found.
For example, district policy states that special education staff can be valuable parts of intervention assistance teams tasked with developing plans for students.
In 25 of 27 interviews with staff, however, special educators explained they were not allowed to be part of intervention assistance teams because it would be a conflict of interest.
The auditors also found that the use of data varied from campus to campus.
Five recommendations
Houston ISD rolled out a new screening method in fall 2017 to help standardize the data campuses use to make decisions for special education services, but school leaders listed 13 other assessments they that they use instead of or in addition to the universal screener.
IEPs often lacked data, as well, the auditor found. Only 44 percent of 300 IEPs reviewed by AIR contained data; of those that did include data, 20 percent included numbers that were not current.
The audit made five recommendations to improve special education services districtwide: implement more structured systems for identifying special education needs; simplify special education procedures; ensure students with disabilities have access to high-quality education; develop a framework for professional development; and give the special education department more oversight over budgets, staff, placement and resources.
Trustees stressed the changes would require more money, which increasingly is hard to come by as the district faces a $115 million budget shortfall.
“These recommendations will require dollars, and this is a resource-scarce environment we’re in,” Trustee Sung said. “…But students with disabilities have been an afterthought for too long.”
Trustee Elizabeth Santos agreed.
“When we do improve special education, we have to put our money where our values are,” she said.