Family & Community Special Communities
Special Education

Special Education Report
November, 2001

This report relates activities in special education for the past year. The report responds to outside budget Section 432, Chapter 159 of the Acts of 2000, FY 2001 Budget, which reads, in part:

Section 432. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shall annually, on or before November 1, report to the general court on the implementation of the provisions of this act. Such report shall include a description on the progress made by school districts in implementing the federal standard, cost increases or savings in cities or towns, the degree of success in providing students with special services within the district or commonwealth, the extent of the development of educational collaboratives to provide necessary services, the increase or decrease of the number of children served, federal non-compliance issues and other such matters as said department deems appropriate. Such report shall be filed with the clerks of the House of Representatives and the senate who shall forward the same to the joint committee on education, arts and humanities and the house and senate committees on ways and means...

Activities related to Special Education:

• Administrative Advisories. Since November 11, 2000 the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has issued six Administrative Special Education Advisories. These advisories were designed to update and inform Superintendents, Charter School Leaders, Special Education Administrators, Directors of Collaboratives, Directors of Approved Special Education Schools and other interested parties of the changes in special education. These six advisories covered overall changes in special education law, compliance activities required by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), guidance on using a sliding fee scale for public payment of independent education evaluations in special education, notification requirements regarding findings of no eligibility for special education, and the updating of the Department's IEP process guide and required and recommended IEP forms and notices.

• Informational Forums. In November and December of 2000, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Program Quality Assurances cluster sponsored statewide informational and educational meetings for Directors of Special Education to discuss and answer questions regarding the revised special education requirements. 331 Directors of Special Education or Pupil Personnel Directors participated in these forums through 18 workshops held regionally across the Commonwealth.

• Regulation Revision. In December of 2000, the Massachusetts Board of Education adopted revisions to the state special education regulations, implementing all requirements related to special education from the outside budget sections of the FY2001 budget. The regulations were widely disseminated and are now posted on the ESE website.

• Curriculum Accommodation Plan. In February 2001 the Commissioner of Education provided a memorandum to school administrators on the new provision in Chapter 71 of the Mass. General Laws called the District Curriculum Accommodation Plan. The Commissioner communicated that the intent of the new statutory provision was to assist school leaders in planning and providing a general education program able to accommodate students' diverse learning needs and avoid unnecessary referrals to special education. Technical assistance has been provided to school districts on implementing this provision and the Department has begun to monitor implementation of this requirement through its coordinated program reviews in districts beginning in October 2001.

• Regulations on Physical Restraint. M.G. L. c71, § 37G, which prohibits the corporal punishment of students, was amended through outside budget sections to the FY 2001 budget. New language required the Board of Education to promulgate regulations regarding the use of physical restraint for students in public education programs. While this requirement is one that affects all general education programs and students and not just students with disabilities, it is an area that has considerable affect on students with disabilities and is included here for that reason. Initial proposed regulations were released by the Board of Education for public comment at the November 2000 meeting and final regulations were promulgated by the Board in February 2001 with an effective date of April 2, 2001. The regulations were widely disseminated and are posted on the Department's website.

  To assist in the first full year of implementation of these regulations, the following activities have taken place:

  1. The Department developed a grant program for educational collaboratives to build capacity in the Commonwealth and to serve as central resources to school districts in providing training on the use of physical restraint. Five collaboratives have been selected to receive funds. Three received funds during the summer of 2001 and trained approximately 60 individuals in the use of physical restraint such that these individuals are certified to train others in-depth. Two additional collaboratives will complete similar training activities in the fall of 2001 for an additional 40 individuals. These 100 trained individuals will serve to increase regional capacity to provide in-depth training (consistent with regulatory requirements) related to the use of physical restraint in public education programs.
  2. Approximately 45 school buildings at the elementary, middle, and high school level were selected as a representative sample of schools to obtain data on the use of physical restraint in schools as part of a data sampling activity to get baseline information on the frequency of the use of physical restraint. A report based on the data received from participating schools will be prepared for the Board of Education.
  3. A PowerPoint presentation entitled, General Overview of Physical Restraint Requirements for Public Education Programs [PPS], was prepared by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for use by public education programs in annual staff training. The presentation serves to assist schools to meet the requirement for annual staff training on these new requirements. The presentation is also available on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education web site.

• Disability Focus Groups & Eligibility Guidelines. Throughout the fall and winter of FY 2000-2001, disability focus groups were convened to identify key facets related to each disability area that would be of assistance in determining eligibility of students for special education services. Information from these disability focus groups was used to update eligibility guidelines and to assist special education Teams to make a determination of type of disability and eligibility for special education. Drafts of an updated document were widely circulated, and in March of 2001, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Office of Special Services published a working draft of its new technical assistance guide entitled "Is Special Education the Right Service?" [PDF] This working draft is intended to be used in the spring, fall, and winter of 2001 and a final document is anticipated early in 2002. This document offers practitioners and parents information on the following:

  1. Guidance on how to ensure a responsive general education environment.
  2. Assistance in understanding disability and the distinctions between and similarities among different types of disabilities.
  3. An explanation of the role of the assessment process in determining whether a student has a disability and is eligible for special education services.
  4. Direction to Team members on establishing the relationship between a student's disability and the student's inability to progress effectively in general education in order to determine whether a student is eligible for special education services.

• Statewide training. The Department held a series of twelve half-day regional training sessions for approximately 1000 school special education personnel throughout the state using the document "Is Special Education the Right Service?" [PDF] as the foundation of the training activity.

• Alternate Assessment. During the fall of 2000 and again in 2001, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education provided statewide instructional training on the use of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) Alternate Assessment for students with disabilities. Massachusetts is nationally recognized for its leadership in the development of a comprehensive alternate assessment, ensuring accountability for access to the general curriculum for all students with disabilities.

• Personnel Development. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education also uses a federal funded grant project entitled Project FOCUS, to strengthen partnerships with child-serving agencies, local school districts, parents, individuals with disabilities and their families, teachers, Institutes of Higher Education, and service organizations. "Project FOCUS" guides statewide efforts towards ensuring qualified and informed special educators, general educators and parents and in meeting the federal requirements for a Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD). Through Project FOCUS, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Office of Special Services has developed a series of training activities and professional trainers to supplement ongoing personnel preparation activities provided within school districts and other agencies. In this endeavor, the Department has developed training modules that are made available to school districts. These modules cover the following topics: Eligibility, the IEP, and the Role of the Principal in Special Education. Additional modules are under development.

• Federally funded grant programs. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Office of Special Services offers entitlement and discretionary grant programs to school districts, collaboratives, and/or approved private special education schools each year. The primary funding source for such programs is federal special education funds. In FY 2001 these grants programs totaled more than $117 million, and in FY 2002 they are anticipated to total almost $151 million.

• Parent's Rights Curriculum. Throughout FY 2001 staff members in the Department met with representatives from key advocacy and school-based organization to discuss the development of a curriculum on parent's rights. The curriculum is scheduled to be used by every school district (along with the special education parent advisory council) each year to inform parents of their rights in the special education process. Feedback was solicited on several drafts from all development participants and from members of the Joint Committee on Education, Arts and the Humanities and their staff. In October 2001 the curriculum was finalized and each school district received a copy of the PowerPoint presentation slides, notes and talking points, copies of notetakers and handouts for the presentation. The Department hosted three question and answer sessions across the Commonwealth for districts and parent advisory councils to assist in implementation at the local level.

Cost increases or savings in cities or towns:

Using final fiscal year information from FY 1999 and FY2000 as a baseline, this report will begin to detail cost increases or savings by school districts beginning in FY 03, when the "Circuit Breaker Law" goes into effect. The law is designed to reimburse districts for high cost students. The law reimburses instructional and tuition costs for in-district and out-of-district students. The data collected by the Department as this law takes effect will assist the Department and districts in assessing the impact of the new law statewide, as well as locally. Currently we have the following information to report on the costs of special education in comparison to the general education spending. This information is provided from local school districts in their End of Year fiscal report to the Department for the last three years. Please note that at this time the FY01 data is estimated. As you see, of direct and indirect spending identified by school districts, the state is contributing approximately 40% of the costs. At the same time, special education costs represent approximately 21% of all educational costs. Spending related to special education, which includes specific grant programs as well as cost information, is increasing from year to year, while the numbers of students appears to be stable or decreasing as shown in the table in this report on the number of students served.

• Municipal Medicaid. Massachusetts cities and towns have been participating in the Municipal Medicaid program as a means of maximizing federal dollars to Massachusetts. School districts participate in this program to generate funds based on services to students receiving special education. Federal revenues based on this program are returned directly to the municipality. A number of municipalities also share such revenue with the school district, and, therefore, this program has also been a source of funding for education. Since its inception in FY94 through FY01 this program has generated approximately $400 million for Massachusetts. In FY00, Medicaid claiming for Massachusetts was approximately $74 million dollars and in FY01 it was approximately $68 million. Of approximately 375 districts, 327 districts participated in this revenue-claiming program in FY01.

The number of students served:

The following information is provided in table form to highlight changes in numbers of students receiving special education services over the last few years.

Degree of success in serving students within the district or Commonwealth:

As the table above shows, almost 90% of the students requiring special education services receive their services in "in-district" programs. This high percentage has been consistent for a number of years. The remaining students are served in "out-of-district" settings including day and residential schools outside of Massachusetts. The Department has currently "approved" approximately 100 students in out-of-state programs pursuant to an individual student placement approval process. Approximately 50 students (some duplication from the individual placement approval numbers) are served in residential schools where the Department has a role in paying part of the costs of the placement. Data kept at the state level will not fully capture out-of-state placements since some placements are made with no financial involvement of the Department and no need for an individual student placement approval from the Department because the program is already fully approved. There currently are nine out-of-state programs that have Massachusetts' approval and do not require individual student placement approval. Eight of those programs are in bordering states and the Department may not be involved in funding the individual student placement because the students are receiving only day services. Estimates on out-of-state placements range from a minimum of 125 to a maximum of several hundred students. Even at the maximum estimate, the student numbers represent less than 1% of the students requiring special education services. Currently, Massachusetts has in-state resources second to no other state in the nation and, therefore, out-of-state placements are generally based solely on unique individual features of the student's needs. In out-of-state schools near Massachusetts' borders, the proximity of the school to the local school district may also play a role since the law requires consideration of programs as close to the student's home as possible.

Progress made by school districts in implementing the federal standard:

The change from the current "maximum possible development" standard to the federal standard of "free and appropriate public education" will take effect on January 1, 2002. In preparation, the Department has met several times with members of the Joint Committee on Education, Arts and the Humanities and their staff and has crafted an administrative advisory that is expected to be disseminated in early November. The advisory outlines legal background information related to the change in standard. Additionally, the advisory highlights that through the Education Reform Act, all students, including students with disabilities, have access to challenging educational material and benefit from the goal of Education Reform which is to provide a public education system that extends to all students the opportunity to reach their full potential.

The extent of the development of educational collaboratives to provide necessary services:

Educational collaboratives in Massachusetts report regular and ongoing development of new programs to meet the needs of their member school districts. "Public day programs" in the table above are almost exclusively created by educational collaboratives and the data indicate some small increases in the use of these programs. Educational collaboratives are also primary providers, along with individual public schools, of services indicated in the table above under the category of "separate classroom." A small number of public residential programs have been created by educational collaboratives. Educational collaboratives have also been developing capacity in the area of training resources. As an example, in this report, under the category of Regulations on Physical Restraint, we have provided information on one activity that seeks to build the capacity of collaboratives to assist school districts with training needs in relation to physical restraint requirements.

Dispute Resolution:

During Fiscal Year 2001, the Department's Program Quality Assurance unit received and resolved 1,460 complaints from the public related to allegations of inappropriate or illegal actions regarding educational laws and regulations. Of these, approximately 95% are special education related concerns and 5% are related to other educational laws.

Between November 1, 2000 and October 18, 2001, the Department's Bureau of Special Education Appeals (BSEA) received 564 requests for hearings. During that same time period, 39 decisions were rendered. These statistics should be read with the following information in mind. In the vast majority of cases, there is significant activity involving a hearing officer prior to the hearing. In almost all cases, a prehearing conference is held. Many cases settle at that time or subsequently. Some settle after a day or two of hearing. Some require a second prehearing conference, or conference calls, and significant hearing officer involvement before they are resolved.

The BSEA does not collect information about requests for mediation. However, the BSEA does maintain data on the BSEA cases closed through the use of mediation. Mediators have closed 673 cases through mediated sessions held between November 1, 2000 and November 1, 2001. During this period the BSEA had seven mediators on staff.

Massachusetts Compliance with Federal Special Education Requirements:

During FY99 Massachusetts developed a special education steering committee that was integrally involved in the monitoring activities of the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). When the monitoring report from OSEP was received at the end of FY00 the special education steering committee met to review the report and then met several times during FY01 to develop a Continuous Improvement Plan (CIMP) for Massachusetts. The CIMP addressed all areas where OSEP had identified non-compliance as well as other areas that the Steering Committee had identified as need areas for Massachusetts. Massachusetts has submitted the CIMP to OSEP and has engaged in all planned activities. OSEP has accepted the plan and has indicated its satisfaction with the development of the plan and identified activities. Massachusetts has conducted activities identified on the CIMP during FY01. Key progress indicators were identified during FY01 and baseline information will be collected on each indicator. Baseline years of FY01 or 02 were chosen based on whether or not an existing source of data collection was present in FY01 or needed to be developed. All areas requiring a new data source were incorporated into the dispute resolution mechanisms described above or the coordinated program review process in which approximately 60 districts are monitored each year for compliance with special education requirements.