State Special Ed System Flunks (VT)

July 14, 2010

Vermont’s special education system has been found to be non-compliant with federal education law, according to an annual performance report for the 2008-09 school year.

The U.S. Department of Education, as part of the Individuals with Disabilities Act, looks at the special education departments of every state to see if the states are meeting the requirements of the law.

Vermont was one of 11 states that failed to meet the requirements for two years or more, and must now receive technical assistance from the federal education department.

Vermont was also required to notify the public about its determination after failing to meet the federal requ irements for two years in a row for students between the ages of 3 and 21.

"This is the second time we have not been able to meet the requirements, and we have already done a lot to address that," said Mike Bailey, Part B data manager at the Vermont Department of Education. "Clearly what we have done is less than adequate and we hope to do better next time."

The U.S. Department of Education looked at Vermont’s special education reporting system and also did a site visit.

According to the final report, Vermont failed to meet federal benchmarks for evaluating children within 60 days of receiving parental consent for an initial evaluation.

During the state’s performance review, of the 560 children for whom parental consent to evaluate was received, 462, or just more than 82 percent, received an evaluation within 60 days.

That number represented a decline from the 90 percent recorded the previous year.

A federal review team looked at all of the evaluations done in 15 of the 60 districts in the state during the 2008-09 school year.

The state also received poor marks for correcting noncompliance reports, with just more than 84 percent of those reports in 2008 being corrected within a year

In 2007 the state corrected 100 percent.

In a third category, the state was penalized for failing to send in reports in a timely and accurate manner.

Prior to the report, the state worked with the federal education department on some of Vermont’s assessment reporting methods.

V ermont does not publicly release data from small schools, when those data would potentially identify specific children in small classrooms.

The federal education department wanted the test results, which would end up on websites, and Vermont at first refused to pass the information on.

The state was able to negotiate special considerations in keeping some of the results out of the public’s eye.

Bailey said the U.S Department of Education seems to be shifting its attention away from test results and outcomes, and more toward meeting reporting compliance standards,

The report that was published on the state’s education department website last week reflects the department’s statewide systems and not those of individual school districts.

Under federal law, Vermont is now required to use federal resources to address its deficiencies.

It is required to report to the U.S Department of Education by Feb. 1, 2011 on the actions it has taken to improve its special education system.

After three and four years of noncompliance, the federal oversight grows more intense, and states are required to submit detailed action plans if they are in noncompliance for four years or more.