Special Education Data Sharing Project Timeline Extended
October 5, 2017
TO THE ADMINISTRATOR ADDRESSED:
SUBJECT: Special Education Data Sharing Project Timeline Extended
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is committed to supporting districts, schools, and teachers as we strive to serve all our students well. As educators, we share a commitment to ensuring that all students, including those with disabilities, achieve academic success.
In June of this year, TEA announced the beginning of a process to use data from many sources and stakeholders to inform our long-term policy and programmatic goals to improve outcomes for students served by special education. Your participation in this project is important because the data from a large sample will help to ensure that we create a plan that is effective and responsive to the needs of all our students.
The initial phase of this process involves sharing Individualized Education Program (IEP) records from up to 300,000 students in Local Education Agencies (LEAs) across Texas. Participating LEAs will be asked to share student IEP records and corresponding STAAR testing data for those students for the previous 3 years. LEAs will receive a data sponsorship grant between $10k-$100k, commensurate with district size, in addition to an individualized LEA-level analytic report. Numerous LEAs indicated interest in participation but expressed concerns with the initial timeline. Therefore, the deadline for LEAs to commit to participation has been extended to December 1st, 2017.
Districts who participated in the IEP analysis will be eligible to participate in various aspects of the second phase of the project where additional grant funds will be made available. Phase two will use the data collected, as well as other data sources, to engage in a new design-thinking process that will drive improvement of services provided to students served by special education in Texas.
TEA will be hosting a webinar on October 11th, 2017 from 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. (CDT)) to provide additional details and to answer any questions that you may have. We invite and encourage all to attend. Please note that prior registration is required.
Webinar Registration Link:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5615883567907954177
Webinar ID: 954-696-827
TEA is partnering with SPEDx, a national consulting group focused on improving outcomes for students served by special education, on this project to aggregate data and identify trends. They are available to answer additional questions on the process and the resulting reporting. Matt Moeller matt.moeller@spedx.com is the point of contact for the project; please do not hesitate to reach out to him. Funding for this project is provided by USED as part of the IDEA grant.
Sincerely,
Justin Porter Ed.D.
Executive Director
Special Populations Department