Differentiated Monitoring Results - Significant Disproportionality
The United States Department of Education understands the complexities States are facing in fully addressing disproportionate representation. The IDEA requires States and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to take steps to address disporportionate representation in special education.
What is Significant Disproportionality?
• Disproportionality is the overrepresentation of a racial or ethnic group in a particular disability category.
• It is measured by a risk ratio that asks: How likely is one group of students to have "X" occur, compared to all other groups of students?
Criteria:
• State Educational Agencies (SEAs) must check LEAs for significant disproportionality in 14 areas as required by the Office of Special Education Programs across all 7 race/ethnicity identities: in 7 disability categories, 2 placement categories, and 5 discipline categories.
• In Oklahoma, disproportionality becomes "significant" when the overrepresentation in a single race-category pair exceeds a risk ratio threshold of 3.0 for 3 years in a row.
• Oklahoma implements an "at risk" process to identify and support districts "at risk" for significant disproportionality, before they must set aside funding to resolve overidentification.
At Risk
At risk districts will likely become significantly disproportionate if the areas of overidentification are not resolved. LEAs that have been identified as "at risk" to become Significant Disporportionate must:
• Complete the appropriate self-assessment to assist in identifying why the district may be overidentifying;
• Meet with OSDE-SES staff to discuss finding; and
• Develop an improvement plan and implement.
Significantly Disproportionality
LEAs that have been identified as Significantly Disproportionality must:
• Complete the appropriate self-assessment to assist in identifying why the district may be overidentifying;
• Meet with OSDE-SES staff to discuss data results;
• Develop an Improvement Plan; and
• Develop a budget that aligns with the Improvement Plan for the required 15% of the following year's federal special education allocation.
Resources
• Special Education Services - Data
• Equity Requirements in IDEA-IDC
• Understanding Significant Disproportionality in Special Education (PPT slides); OSDE-11/2018
• Disproportionality and Equity (Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP))
• Special Education Professional Development - This is the Special Education Services Professional Development page, with links to Project 613, Professional Development requests, and other OSDE specific resources.
► Special Education Compliance
