Course/Program Enrollment & Discipline: Analysis for Hawthorne Elementary
1. Organize a team and establish team member duties. Common team members include principals, teacher leaders, counselor or school psychologist, etc. Disaggregated data will be provided centrally, and district staff will be available for consultation.
Administrators. Instructional coaches and HILT team members
2. List all programs (or discipline areas) reviewed, but analyze one area at a time with this protocol (e.g. elementary highly capable program enrollment OR middle school advanced courses OR elementary school exclusionary discipline suspensions, expulsions).
Highly capable program and Discipline
3. Conduct data analysis to note all preliminary findings and identified disparity issues. Examine and discuss the data; look objectively for patterns, trends, and variability; and brainstorm. Note preliminary findings. E.g. Hispanic students comprise 21% of our student body, but only represent 11% of our highly capable students.
Preliminary findings:
Preliminary findings: HAE’s student enrollment for the 2019-2020 school year is 553, with 10 students receiving exclusionary (out of school) discipline. Males represent 70% and females 30%, which is an overrepresentation for males. 70% of the students were free and reduced lunch, 30% are EL, and 60% are Students with disabilities, with SWD and EL populations being overrepresented. Additionally, Hispanic students were also overrepresented at 40% (9% more than our population), and students that were two or more races were overrepresented. All things considered, HAE has only 10 students that have been excluded from school this year. We also need to consider intersectionality between special programs status, gender, and ethnicity. For example, one student that was excluded is Hispanic, FRL, a SWD and also male.
For in-school suspensions, there were five students and they were all male, which is an over-representation. Hispanic and White ethnicities were overrepresented at 60 and 40 % respectively.
4. Determine if any additional data (qualitative or quantitative) are needed to answer questions raised by the preliminary findings. If so, where are these data located? For example, ways students learn about advanced courses at the secondary level; ways students are apprised of school expectations; tolls used to communicate highly capable program specifications.
| Additional data needed? Number of students that had repeated suspensions. How many of the student suspensions were from students with IEPs and behavior plans? Data for students that qualify for more than one category in special programs.
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| Where will we get it? ESP/CoGNOS report
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5. After discussing the preliminary findings and reviewing any additional data, are there any additional findings and disparity issues the school and district can identify?
There is on overrepresentation of students with disabilities being excluded. This means that SWD are potentially being suspended due to a manifestation of their disability. There is an overrepresentation of males being excluded.
6. For each disparity issue or finding, identify causes and root causes. Consider the systematic causes of disparities in course and program enrollment, and student discipline, and why they occur. Focus on one issue at a time.
Disproportionate number of SWD being excluded
Cause 1: Lack of staff ability to modify disruptive and aggressive behaviors.
Root Cause: Lack of adherence to student IEP and behavior plans; or, inability to recognize an ineffective behavior plan.
Root Cause: Lack of knowledge to effectively engage in a cycle of behavior plan analysis and modification to reduce the negative behavior.
Disproportionate number of males being excluded
Cause 1: Male students are not being consistently engaged academically in the classroom.
Root Cause: There is likely a disconnect between the lessons and activities offered by boys’ female teachers (there is only one male teacher at Hawthorne), and lessons, activities, and materials they find highly engaging.
Root Cause: Bias toward male students for negative behavior; bias that male students are more likely to be get a discipline referral.
7. For each root cause, identify a corrective action to eliminate disparities. Focus corrective action on ways to dissolve the root rather than “patching up” a cause that yields disparities. In selecting a strategy, consider how the strategy will help, if the strategy is appropriate and feasible, and if it is supported by evidence-based research.
Root Cause: Lack of adherence to student IEP and behavior plans; or, inability to recognize an ineffective behavior plan.
Corrective Action: Professional development and mentoring for SPED teachers and general education teachers around data collection, data analysis, and evaluating the efficacy of a current behavior intervention plan (BIP). Ongoing professional development on implementing the behavior plan.
Root Cause: Lack of knowledge to effectively engage in a cycle of behavior plan analysis and modification to reduce the negative behavior.
Corrective Action: Professional development for teachers on targeting problem behaviors, and collecting Antecedent, behavior, and consequence (ABC) data; analyzing the data, and strategies to implement in order to reduce behavior when the current strategies are shown by data to be ineffective.
Root Cause: There is likely a disconnect between the lessons and activities offered by boys’ female teachers (there is only one male teacher at Hawthorne), and lessons, activities, and materials they find highly engaging.
Corrective action: Have intentional hiring practices; recruit for high quality male teachers. Have teachers take interest inventories in their classrooms and compare to their current curriculum. Are they including content that is of high interest to all of the students? Provide professional development on culturally responsive teaching.
Root Cause: Bias toward male students for negative behavior making them more likely to be get a discipline referral.
Corrective action: Provide professional development on culturally responsive teaching, and on identifying and confronting internal biases. Have staff meetings that share out referral data and point out the disparity between males and females. Reiterate and/or calibrate discipline referral expectations with teachers and supervisory paras to ensure they are not allowing gender bias to influence their referrals.
8. Develop an implementation plan. Establish measurement and evidence of success after making for corrective actions. Discuss who will be responsible, the resources needed, evidence of implementation, a prompt timeline, how success will be monitored, and the intended result. These strategies might already exist in school improvement plans or be added.
Implementation plan: Reduce the number of males and SWD receiving in and out of school suspensions.
1.
Who will monitor? Principal, Assistant Principal, SPED case managers
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What resources are needed? Representatives from Special Services to provide ongoing professional development; ongoing PD for identifying bias; PD on culturally responsive teaching; highly engaging content for boys
3.
What is your evidence of implementation? Artifacts from professional development sessions; reduced suspensions of students with disabilities, interest inventory completion.
4.
What is your timeline? Implementation September 2020 -on-going
5.
What is the intended result? We anticipate a decrease in the number of SWD and males that are suspended in or out of school.
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