The DPI letter said the district has “significant disproportionality over a span of three consecutive years without reasonable progress toward reducing the rate.”
Essentially, the ‘risk ratio’ is the likelihood of someone in one of seven racial and ethnic categories compared to students in other groups, adjusted for population. The sanction against NHCS found that Black students were significantly more likely to be identified as having an emotional disturbance than students from other groups. This doesn’t mean that NHCS is incorrectly identifying students as having an emotional disability – but it does mean the district is on the hook to bring the ratio for Black students more closely in line with students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.
To fix this issue, the district must reserve about 15% of federal funds from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) grant. That’s around $900,000, which will be set aside each year over the next three years. The district doesn’t technically lose the money but it gets redirected through professional development and directing staff like a psychologist and a behavior specialist to address the issue. This is how the district said it spent $4.5 million over three years to fix the suspension disproportionality.
The district is looking at early intervention programs that help students before they are identified as having an emotional issue.
NCDPI defines an emotional disability as exhibiting one of the following: an inability to make educational progress that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers or teachers; inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances; a general mood of unhappiness or depression; or a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.
The state agency further adds that these behaviors must be witnessed over a long period, that they adversely affect educational performance, and that the student requires specially designed instruction.
Assistant Superintendent Julie Varnam said the district has been cited for this disproportionality rate before, and a school psychologist will specifically focus on these issues. A certified special education teacher will also help students acquire coping, conflict resolution, and emotional regulation skills. This staff member will help determine if they need to keep working on those — or if they might meet the eligibility criteria to have those special education services.
The federal Office of Special Education Services (OSEP) determines the acceptable level of risk, and NCDPI outlines the specific ‘risk ratio’ threshold for overidentification. The number is supposed to be around ‘3,’ and it’s currently around 5.8. According to Varnam, Alderman Elementary, Blair Elementary, and Dorothy B. Johnson PreK are the “target” schools that need to work on this ‘risk’ rate. She said the district has a “good opportunity to mitigate [those] risks” and is where they need to “move the needle.”
During the October public comment period of the New Hanover County school board meeting, Love Our Children education activist Loretta Stackhouse drew attention to the sanction letter and asked whether the district could present on this at its November meeting.
Stackhouse said she took issue with the district not acknowledging the new sanction at its August meeting when it was announced that they had come off the list for disproportionality and suspensions.
Varnam responded to WHQR that she was only asked to present the status of the suspension disproportionality to the school board.
“My communication was that progress has been made in this area, and the state no longer considers us disproportionate in discipline. If my presentation had been overall about special education and any potential areas of disproportionality or any existing areas of disproportionality, I could have explained that further, but the topic was specifically related to student discipline,” she said.
Varnam said the district’s 18 psychologists and the special education staff will receive more training on reviewing the 14 categories of IDEA eligibility criteria for an individualized education plan (IEP).
To be eligible for identification, which is not a diagnosis—Varnam said that’s only for a medical doctor’s determination—the school documents teacher interventions, and a social worker and a school psychologist compile reports on the student. All of this documentation then goes to the IEP team, who determines whether a student fits the criteria for a disability category. That team includes district staff, a school psychologist, administrators, and parents.
While the district wants to reduce the risk ratio, which would mean having fewer students identified, Varnam said they wouldn't deliberately under-identify students just to hit a target number.
Varnam added, “We do not make eligibility decisions for a single child based on our [risk ratio] rate, but we are making sure that we hone our skills and understand eligibility criteria on the whole so that we can make good decisions for each and every child.”
Dr. Tory Lawrence is NCDPI’s IDEA data analyst. She said it’s easier to understand this in terms of a risk of overrepresentation in this emotional disturbance category.
“We want to decrease the risk, or decrease the likelihood of students being categorized in this area if they don't justifiably need to be in that area because that's the bottom line with special education services because an IEP team has the obligation of determining the most appropriate identification for a disability,” she said.
In other words, Lawrence said it’s easier for the public to understand that, for example, “98% are being identified this way, that’s more concrete than ‘Hey, you got this risk ratio.”
Varnam said that to address the ‘emotional disturbance’ risk rate, the district has to do more root-cause analysis, which would “engage in cultural responsiveness, understand [childhood] trauma, and [have] informed instructional practices.”
Varnam said that’s how the district eventually came off the list for suspension disproportionality, but other societal and policy decisions could lower this risk rate—for example, having more access to preschool and other programs to address the first 2,000 days of a child’s life.
“It is certainly plausible that the first 2,000 days can create processes, and perhaps, reactions and responses and protective factors within a child that, once they come to school, meet the definition of an emotional disturbance if they have not gotten the support and the things that they needed in those first 2,000 days,” she said.
Another issue that could compound the program is the district’s neighborhood school model, which is how they typically assign students. This can contribute to the issues of concentrating students who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and the higher incidences of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in certain schools.
As for what the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction told the district to do to fix this risk of overrepresentation, Varnam said, ‘Well, you've done great. You've come off the list [for overrepresentation for suspension practices]. And we're like, ‘Yeah, but we want to know who the model is and where the best practice model is that we can study and determine if it can be replicated within our community and within our schools?’ And they've said, ‘You've done the great work.’”
Lawrence explains the risk ratio further, “If I was an African American student in New Hanover County, I have a 5.8 more likelihood than someone in one of the other seven subcategories [these are other racial groups, ethnicities] of being identified as a student with an emotional disability.”
Lawrence added, “NHCS could technically identify [these students] correctly, and that’s how the cards fall.”
How those cards could be influenced by school board/district policies and procedures. Lawrence said the district will have “to see why they have that risk. Is it a makeup of their school, families, and communities? Is something in those practices or policies contributing to the overidentification [risk]?”
Lawrence acknowledged that sometimes districts can ask for the “magic answer” when cited for this type of disproportionality, but she said it takes them peeling back the layers of their data to determine how to reduce the risk.
Nonetheless, Varnam said she and her team will study leadership in behavior support, and the district will work to reduce the likelihood of these challenging behaviors. But, she reiterated, “We also know that many of our students that may come to us already exhibit the characteristics that meet this definition that gives them specially designed instruction.”
Varnam also cited the continuation of following the CHAMPS model from Safe & Civil Schools and CPI's Reframing Behavior training in the district. “It’s around reframing student behavior and really digging a little bit deeper into the neuroscience of [those] behaviors.” The further implementation of these programs could help lower this risk rate.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated to include CPI's training.
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