Austin’s public school system has cleared a major hurdle in its goal to keep control of its special education services. At its meeting on Feb. 8, the board of trustees announced that the district has cleared the backlog in evaluations for students requesting the services, the problem that caused the state to threaten to take over the district’s special ed department last year.
Faithful readers will recall that Austin ISD fell behind in providing the federally mandated evaluations during the COVID pandemic. By January 2023, nearly 1,800 students were on a months-long waiting list. The Texas Education Agency announced shortly after that it would take over the SPED department. AISD leaders cut a deal with the agency in August, promising to erase the backlog, improve the district’s data systems, and accept monitors from TEA to collaborate on these and other efforts.
Those monitors, Sherry Marsh and Lesa Shocklee, spoke at Thursday’s board session, congratulating the district on clearing the backlog by the agency’s Jan. 31 deadline, an accomplishment some observers had doubted was possible. Marsh used a phrase you hear often at district meetings these days, describing the work as “a heavy, heavy lift.”
Since TEA became a constant presence in the district, board trustees have been effusively welcoming in their communications with the agency. That diplomatic spirit was on display last Thursday. Superintendent Matias Segura thanked the monitors for their partnership. Board President Arati Singh said the quiet part out loud: “When you hear you’re getting monitored you’re like, ‘Oh, gosh.’ But you guys are real human beings and you’re very nice and we appreciate all that you’re doing.”
“When you hear you’re getting monitored you’re like, ‘Oh, gosh.’ But you guys are real human beings and you’re very nice and we appreciate all that you’re doing.” – Austin ISD Board of Trustees President Arati Singh
Before the backlog news, the AISD trustees mulled over results from middle-of-the-year Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) testing which seems to indicate that second-grade SPED students are improving in reading faster than third-graders. “Do we have an understanding of why the second-graders are leaping forward … and why the third-graders are stagnating?” Trustee Lynn Boswell asked Dillon Finan, director of campus and district accountability.
Finan said the number is partly explained by the fact that second-grade SPED students tested below their peers at the end of the last school year, so when they improved this year the numbers looked more dramatic. Segura reminded listeners of the difficult situation the current crop of third-graders faced when they entered kindergarten in 2020, staring at their computer screens during the COVID pandemic. “The impact of the pandemic really disrupted learning,” he said.
Boswell focused on a different set of testing data showing a big decrease in the numbers of students flagged as at risk for dyslexia. More than 2,500 students were regarded as at risk in 2022 and 2023. This year, 1,756 were flagged.
“This means that fewer students are showing that they’re experiencing difficulties in phonics, in letter-sound awareness,” said Cherry Lee, executive director of instructional delivery, inclusion, and related services. “I think that’s an indication that we are seeing strong early literacy instruction in our first-grade classrooms. Hopefully we’ll see the same thing in our kindergarten screening data as well.”
Segura noted that the board approved new instructional material for phonics last April and teachers began using it in August. He suggested the dyslexia data is a “leading indicator” showing that the change in strategy is working. “It’s one of those things that we can point to and begin to feel hopeful that the system is beginning to respond,” he said.
This article appears in February 16 • 2024.
