State Takes Harder Look at Special Education

State investigators have shifted their strategy for monitoring special education programs throughout the state to get a truer picture of what schools are doing.

Although the 55 districts undergoing review this year will know when investigators are coming, they will not be told which records investigators will review or which classrooms will be visited.

The new approach was prompted by a 1999 federal report on special education that criticized how states monitored programs, said Ralph Scott, manager in the special education division of the California Department of Education. The report found that, in many cases, crucial paperwork, including goals, progress reports and three-year evaluations, were incomplete or missing.

States were threatened with loss of funds unless they changed.

In the past, district officials would get weeks, sometimes months, of notice about inspections. That allowed teachers to prepare and officials to get paperwork in order.

There are about 50,000 special education students in Orange County and three county districts under review: Fullerton Joint Union High School District, and the Santa Ana and Tustin unified districts. Reports from site visits will be done by the end of April.

Bobby Santillan, director of special education services for Santa Ana Unified, said his district’s checks were finished last week and a full report will be available soon. He said most comments concerned updating student progress forms, increasing in-house training for special education teachers and making sure staffing was appropriate.

“There’s not a pool of credentialed and experienced special education teachers,” he said. “Then, if we’re looking at vision specialists and deaf and hard-of-hearing itinerants, those people are even more rare.”

He said that he is already trying to implement changes that evaluators requested. His district serves 5,402 special education students.

“I’m not discouraged because these visitations will result in improving services to our children,” he said.

Last year, the state reviewed Garden Grove Unified School District, Saddleback Valley Unified School District and Capistrano Unified School District. Investigators are revisiting districts previously reviewed to assess progress. Garden Grove will get its progress report later this month.

Saddleback, with about 3,000 special education students, was found in compliance after corrections it made were reviewed.

“We welcome these kinds of reviews,” said Rona Martin, Saddleback’s special education director. “We’re not perfect. If we have to fix things and change things, we’re open to that.”

Martin said her district’s corrections meant getting paperwork filed on each student and completing evaluations that are scheduled every three years.

Like Santillan, she supports the new visitations, even though the process is more rigorous.

“There’s a lot of paperwork in special education, and it’s all there to protect the rights of children and their families,” she said.

Scott said the extra work has forced his department to hire more than a dozen new people.

The first step in the state visitation process is meeting parents of special education students.

After collecting their information and concerns, investigators then go to schools and request up to 50 random records, Scott said. Reviewing those takes about three days. Officials check 812 federal requirements.

“Most of the time, parents are very supportive of the districts,” Scott said. “Sometimes we’ll have a parent who has been angry at the district for a long time and they’ll use our parent night to vent.”

The next parent meeting will be for the Fullerton Joint Union High School District at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the district office, 1051 W. Bastanchury Road.