CalSTAT (California Services for Technical Assistance and Training) is a special project of the California Department of Education, Special Education Division, located at Napa County Office of Education. It is funded through the Special Education Division and the California State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG). The SPDG, a federal grant, supports and develops partnerships with schools and families by providing training, technical assistance and resources to both special education and general education.
December 2006
This cross site analysis is based primarily on information gathered in interviews conducted with Leadership Site personnel in 2006. Without their generous contributions of time, the report would not have been possible.
The full-length individual profiles of Leadership Sites on which this cross site analysis is based can be found on the CalSTAT website, www.calstat.org. An executive summary of the cross site findings can be found on the website as well.
The report was prepared by Casey J. Morrigan Associates (www.cjmorrigan.com) on behalf of CalSTAT and the CA State Improvement Grant (SIG). CalSTAT is a special project of the California Department of Education, Special Education Division.
The interviews were conducted by Mary Grady, MA, CalSTAT Publications Manager, with the assistance of Donna Lee, Project Assistant.
Editorial guidance and review was provided by Cheryl "Li" Walter, PhD, SIG/CalSTAT Project Evaluator, and Director of Evaluation and Research, California Institute on Human Services; Linda Blong, CalSTAT/SIG Project Manager; Anne Davin, PhD, MFCC, CalSTAT/SIG Project Manager; Kelly Bucy, MPA, Project Coordinator; Marin Brown, MAIS, Project Coordinator; Donna Lee; and Mary Grady.
Funds for this project come in part from federal funds awarded as a State Program Improvement Grant to California (CFDA 84.323A) allowed In Part D of Public Law 108-446, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as amended in 2004. These dollars are considered local assistance funds and will assist individuals serving children birth to 22 years of age and their families.
Seventeen Leadership Sites received awards through CalSTAT in 2005 and 2006 to support research-based approaches to a unified model of education. This analysis defines the common characteristics that have emerged from the sites' implementation of these approaches. It provides a description of practices in the field that may be of use to schools, districts or funders considering or implementing change.
The analysis is based on information gathered from interviews with Leadership Sites conducted by CalSTAT staff in the spring of 2006; written materials provided by sites at the interviews; site responses to interview follow-up questions; site applications for CalSTAT funding; and school accountability report cards published on the Internet. This information was used to create a series of profiles (one for each Leadership Site). The findings from those profiles are summarized in this document. Table 1 provides a listing of the schools and districts interviewed.
| Middle and High Schools (11 schools) |
Districts (5 districts) |
Behavioral Support Site (1 school) |
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
See Appendix A for a listing of Leadership Sites, their student populations, and locations.
This analysis summarizes the experiences of the schools and districts that received awards for collaboration, literacy, parent participation and behavior support.
The first part is divided into sections reflecting the stages of development for inclusive collaborative models. Each section describes themes that emerged across sites for a given stage of development.
The second part of this report summarizes the approach of the Leadership Site that received an award for its comprehensive positive behavioral supports. This site's approach was unique among the Leadership Sites and thus is summarized separately from the others.
The changes in special education noted in this paper have been described using many different terms. Some districts have given names to their programs or strategies (for example, Elk Grove's "CAST" or Collaborative Academic Support Teams; Hesperia's "ExCEL" or Excellence, a Commitment to Every Learner) and these names have become well recognized in California and beyond. Although focused on change in special education, the model encompasses many elements of school reform commonly linked with changes in general education. Some have referred to the model described in this paper as the "CalSTAT model" or the "collaborative model." In short, there are many possible ways to characterize the emerging model.
For the purposes of this paper, there needs to be a term that can be used as shorthand for the group of changes that usually began in special education but that have affected many other aspects of schools and schooling. While there is no current agreement in the field or in the literature about the ideal term to use, this paper uses the term "inclusive collaboration."
Prior to undertaking the changes that led to their selection as Leadership Sites, all the sites without exception provided special education in traditional models. This generally included
Interviewees at Leadership Sites looked back at their schools' cultures and noted that, prior to collaboration, they were often characterized by:
In each of the sites, a group of factors came together to prompt reexamination of its approach to special education. In the resulting changes, general education was affected as well. Each site experienced a unique combination of events that moved individuals and institutions toward a new way of delivering special education services.
Inclusive collaboration took time to fully develop. The time frame for sites to move from the initial prompts toward full implementation was unique to each site as well, but ranged from four to ten years.
The advent of standardized testing was mentioned universally as a key element in reexamining "business as usual." For example, interviewees noted that:
The ongoing costs associated with special education, and the associated lack of positive results, were also noted by interviewees as important prompts toward change. They noted that:
Related to the costs of special education were the issues of how special education was meeting the needs of children who needed support in their learning, but who were not qualified for special education.
Many sites noticed that the traditional structure of special education seemed to promote social relationships that sites were no longer willing to tolerate. Among the issues that interviewees noted were:
At a few Leadership Sites, events outside the schools or districts arose that impelled them toward considering inclusive collaboration.
In all cases, a period of reflection and planning followed the site's trigger events. During this period, leaders emerged to initiate and shape next steps and help sites answer the question, "What next?"
Leadership was the catalyst that allowed schools and districts to act on events to effect change. Leaders shared a strong, even passionate, commitment to change at their sites. This commitment would be the fuel for planning processes that often demanded many volunteer hours and a willingness to rethink the status quo.
Almost all sites involved teachers (and many included other school staff) in their planning efforts to design and implement changes, and this "leadership from the middle" encouraged educator ownership of inclusive collaboration. The voluntary nature of the planned changes, coupled with the strong and immediate evidence of positive results, tended to "sell" inclusive collaboration to staff that may have been resistant to change.
While educators were a vital part of any planning process, teachers alone did not bring about needed change. Teachers needed administrative support to make long-term or systematic change. This support came from site level administration, the district, the local SELPA/COE, or some combination of the three. In some cases, leadership emerged only after administrative or educator staff turned over. Change was accelerated if the new hire was experienced in or committed to collaboration.
Many leaders - whether principals, teachers or others - drew on the organizational change principles based on Margaret Wheatley's writings as taught by Sharon Keating and Steve Zuieback at CalSTAT Leadership Institutes. Peer-to-peer technical assistance facilitated by CalSTAT provided opportunities to talk with and observe others implementing inclusive collaboration.
Much of the effort that went into the initial planning was voluntary and in-kind in nature, though in one case, the availability of local grants supported some of the work. Release time and funds to obtain training also assisted in initial planning.
Among Leadership Sites, there were many ways that individuals representing different roles and levels within the system demonstrated leadership in the process of creating new and unified systems of general and special education. For example:
Principals showed leadership by:
Teachers showed leadership by:
District personnel showed leadership by:
SELPA's showed leadership by:
As sites moved from planning to implementation, the first change efforts emerged.
With the exception of one site, early implementation was voluntary in nature. Educator staff was persuaded, not required, to begin experimenting with new approaches. Initial efforts were small in scale: a single classroom, a small group of students, a selected subject. At some sites, a Learning Center was created, but was not fully utilized right away.
All the elements that would characterize the core of inclusive collaboration - collaboration, data-driven decision-making, blended and team-taught classes, and more - were present at most sites early on, but were "piloted." Schools found that early successes with these smaller-scale efforts allowed for later expansion of their inclusive collaboration approaches.
For example, interviewees used these strategies early on:
In the case of the site that embarked on a non-voluntary full-scale effort its first year, staff found they needed to regroup and reconsider their methods. Beginning in its second year, the site focused its efforts on two academic departments rather than all departments, and has been able to sustain that model up to the present.
Schools were able to use technical assistance (TA) to select interventions and target their efforts. TA provided by CalSTAT provided a framework for change cited by several sites. For example:
While there was no firm line that separated "early" from "later" implementation, at most sites "later" implementation meant a move from more casual, small-scale and experimental change, to broader-scale commitment of resources and a shift toward inclusive collaboration as the standard method of operation at the site. While participation of individual teachers continued to be voluntary under later implementation, traditional methods of special education delivery became the exception rather than the rule.
The foundation of most inclusive collaboration was a set of classroom and instructional approaches paired with a collaborative planning process to support classroom changes. Generally, the classroom changes were:
These classroom and instructional changes required continual planning and review by teachers and administrators to operate smoothly. This planning and review generally took place in collaborative meetings. These meetings ranged from informal and unscheduled meetings during teachers' free time, to scheduled and structured meetings held during common prep or other time allocated for that purpose.
The main tasks in collaborative meetings included:
Schools frequently cited the power of the master schedule in supporting change: scheduling in-school electives and interventions, collaborative opportunities, and allowing for flexible placement of students over the course of the school year. Other types of support provided by districts and site administrators to instructional staff included:
While most sites sought professional development outside the site, some felt that staff with outside training could bring back needed information to others at the site. A focus on ongoing professional development was viewed by interviewees as a vital part of inclusive collaboration. Key mechanisms for professional development included:
Topics most frequently mentioned as subjects for professional development or training included
The issue of student behavior had initially served as a prompt to some Leadership Sites in adopting changes in their special education delivery model. Whether behavioral issues were an initial impetus to change, or an ongoing concern, many sites adopted positive behavioral support programs after implementing inclusive collaboration. Many with and without formal behavioral programs saw improved behavioral indicators at their sites after collaborative changes were implemented, though this was not universal.
The behavioral support programs implemented by Leadership Sites fell into three categories:
Some sites, though not all, had financial resources to draw upon to support their inclusive collaboration. When funds were not available, sites often utilized staff in non-traditional ways, or drew on volunteer time.
As sites settled into full implementation of their collaborative changes, some sought ways to expand, deepen, or replicate what they were doing. Some of the expansion strategies used and examples from specific sites include:
Many (though not all) sites selected research-based literacy interventions as part of the quest to improve the academic achievements of all students. The adoption of these interventions usually followed the examination of data from standardized tests that indicated lack of student proficiency in some aspect of language arts.
Literacy interventions were a natural fit for program approaches that were using tiering or leveling (grouping by ability), and grouping by grade level for core subject areas. Some sites developed intervention protocols based on levels of literacy; grade level instruction was able to take their literacy levels into account.
As sites gained more targeted knowledge about what aspect of literacy (comprehension, fluency, or phonemic awareness) needed development in their unique student populations, they were able more closely to match intervention to student need.
Following is an example of how this worked at one particular school site.
Some special education teachers working with IEP's found that research-based literacy programs yielded assessments that were detailed enough to help determine whether students were reaching specific IEP goals.
Some teachers working with English Language Learners found that detailed assessments and targeted interventions could help them more readily sort out English acquisition issues from learning disabilities.
One site adopted a universal schoolwide writing program, "Step Up to Writing" across all subjects, though most literacy interventions focused on reading ability. The "Six Minute Solution" was used at another school during the daily enrichment period.
Resistance by teaching staff to inclusive collaboration, a universal challenge at leadership sites, was managed by allowing for voluntary adoption of new methods, by setting in place scheduling incentives for those who did participate, and by focusing on the positive effects on student achievement and behavior. Some sites focused on providing training on differentiated instruction and other topics to help teachers enhance their skills in these areas.
The challenge of carving out sufficient collaborative planning time was met with a wide variety of responses. A few sites delegated student placement decisions to Learning Center staff or a paraeducator in a support position. Some teachers found informal time on an ad hoc basis to collaborate and plan. Some volunteered at lunchtimes or after school to meet with students, parents, or other teachers. The majority found that setting up protected time to collaborate, whether weekly or semi-monthly, served their needs best.
In early implementation, some sites did not communicate proactively with parents, leaving parents with the impression that their children were not receiving the interventions or special education to which they were entitled. This challenge was met variously by providing information prior to the start of the fall term, holding information sessions during the school year, and going to transition IEP meetings. This challenge was almost universally one of early implementation, since parents were usually quickly convinced of the appropriateness of inclusive collaboration by the positive effects on their children and on the classroom and school environments.
Many literacy programs brought an increased workload in assessment and tracking progress. Sites found parent volunteers or hired substitutes to help manage this challenging aspect of literacy interventions.
Sites struggled with adequate staffing to team, collaborate, and remediate. Those with Title 1, School Improvement Funds, or district support were able to utilize those resources in support of their changed programs. However, many sites made changes by reallocating resources and drawing on in-kind donations of time, rather than obtaining additional financial resources. Some districts provided problem-solving and support staff to assist schools in identifying solutions to time and resource challenges.
In some of the larger districts, high growth rates affected the ability to replicate the model during busy expansion times or in very crowded school facilities.
While not all sites experienced all positive results listed below, all sites reported some positive results from collaborative inclusion. Following are examples of the kinds of improvements that sites reported experiencing in implementing inclusive collaboration.
Finally, Leadership Sites reported nearly universally that inclusive collaboration fostered a sense of accountability for all students, whether in general or special education. This sense of accountability was in contrast to the prevailing culture prior to inclusive collaboration, in which teachers felt responsible only for their own classrooms or students. The sense that "they are all our kids" was attributed to the joint effort expended in teaming, blending classrooms, and creating interventions to assist all students in succeeding.
While most of the other sites addressed behavioral issues in the context of inclusive collaboration, Mesa Verde Middle School was the only Leadership Site for whom behavioral supports were the primary program of change. Because its program was unique among Leadership Sites, it is reviewed separately in this section.
In 2004, the school lost an assistant principal and a counselor through staff cuts, and no longer had the personnel to deal with office referrals for behavior issues. The school psychologist saw the crisis as a potential opportunity to shift the school's approach from that of "behavior management" to "behavior support." Basing his proposal on research by Diana Browning Wright, George Sugai, Roy Mayer, and others, he suggested to the principal a new schoolwide Positive Behavior Support System. The new program was implemented in the fall of 2003.
The key element of Mesa Verde's implementation was the "support call." In return for ending the system of referring students to the office, the administration promised a ten-minute response time if a teacher had a problem with a student's behavior and called for support. The administrator would then immediately address the issue in the hallway with the student. He or she would also immediately call the parent(s) and enlist parents' support. The administrator would deal with the student behavior right then and usually return the student to the classroom.
Parents were treated as allies in supporting positive behavior. Because they were notified within minutes of a behavior issue, they could participate in a timely way in the resolution of the problem.
The school administration used assessments aligned with the California Standards Test to generate data to determine individual children's proficiency levels in content covered in the test. The school gives the information to teachers to guide their teaching of individual students, and to administrators to assist them in planning behavioral and academic interventions. Any behavioral issues can be addressed in the context of academic needs as well.
The school provided initial and ongoing training of all staff on positive behavior support. It has just begun training teachers in "Quantum Learning," a behavior support approach for adolescents.
The school psychologist assembled behavior data after a year to assess the program's effectiveness. Through that process, he was able to identify children who were having repeat behavior calls and decided to implement additional interventions with them. Those children were placed in an intervention during the school day called "Success Club." Administrators taught this class, in which students were pulled out of their elective and helped with building their academic skills. While the Club mainly consisted of children formally identified for ongoing participation, the administrative team also included additional children if they were failing, and kept them in the Club for two to three days to bolster their learning.
The program focused on requiring natural consequences of students, rather than punishment.
Mesa Verde's previous principal, who was initially responsible for the behavioral program's implementation at the school, is now creating a similar program at a newly opened middle school where he is now the principal. With this new program, two of four middle schools in the district will have positive behavioral support programs. A school counselor is also starting up a similar program in another new school.
There remains a small subset of teachers at the school who do not support the new approach. However, they are a small enough number so that the school continues to use the new program even without their full buy-in. The culture at the school has shifted so greatly that it is now unusual for teachers to revert to former patterns of discipline.
| Leadership Site Name | Year Awarded | Previous SIG1 Model Site | City | County | Award | Student Enrollment 2005-2006 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atascadero Junior High | 2006 | No | Atascadero | San Luis Obispo | Collaboration | 711 |
| Big Bear MS | 2005 | Yes | Big Bear Lake | San Bernardino | Collaboration | 534 |
| Iron Horse MS | 2005 | Yes | San Ramon | Contra Costa | Collaboration | 961 |
| Marine View MS | 2005 | No | Huntington Beach | Orange | Literacy | 931 |
| McKinleyville MS | 2005 | No | McKinleyville | Humboldt | Collaboration | 403 |
| Mesa Verde MS | 2005 | No | San Diego | San Diego | Behavior | 1,380 |
| Pine Hollow MS | 2005 | No | Concord | Contra Costa | Collaboration | 760 |
| Ranchero MS | 2006 | No | Hesperia | San Bernardino | Family Partnership | 1,342 |
| Richmond Elementary | 2005 | Yes | Ridgecrest | Kern | Collaboration | 350/87* |
| Rincon MS | 2005 | Yes | Escondido | San Diego | Collaboration | 1,473 |
| Sanger HS | 2006 | No | Sanger | Fresno | Collaboration | 2,224 |
| Valley View MS | 2005 | No | Concord | Contra Costa | Collaboration | 792 |
| Vista View MS | 2006 | No | Fountain Valley | Orange | Literacy | 884 |
| Leadership Site Name | Year Awarded | Previous SIG1 Model Site | City | County | Award | Number of Schools in District | Student Enrollment 2005-2006 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elk Grove USD | 2005 | Yes | Elk Grove | Sacramento | Collaboration | Elementary (K-12) | 40 | Elementary (K-12) | 32,914 |
| Middle | 8 | Middle | 9,858 | ||||||
| High | 14 | High | 17,963 | ||||||
| High | 62 | High | 60,735 | ||||||
| Hesperia USD | 2005 | Yes | Hesperia | San Bernardino | Collaboration | Elementary (K-12) | 14 | Elementary (K-12) | 9,639 |
| Middle | 5 | Middle | 4,181 | ||||||
| High | 8 | High | 6,447 | ||||||
| High | 27 | High | 20,267 | ||||||
| Paradise USD | 2005 | Yes | Paradise | Butte | Collaboration | Elementary (K-12) | 7 | Elementary (K-12) | 2,404 |
| Middle | 3 | Middle | 938 | ||||||
| High | 4 | High | 1,867 | ||||||
| High | 14 | High | 5,209 | ||||||
Point Arena Schools (Arena Union Elem. SD and Pt. Arena Jt. High SD) |
2006 | No | Point Arena | Mendocino | Collaboration | Elementary (K-12) | 2 | Elementary (K-12) | 282 |
| Middle | 0 | Middle | 0 | ||||||
| High | 2 | High | 188 | ||||||
| High | 4 | High | 470 | ||||||