Improving Special Education Services (ISES) June 2011

Improving Special Education Services (ISES) is a collaborative stakeholder group convened by the California Department of Education, Special Education Division. The State Performance Plan (SPP), Annual Performance Report (APR), and State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) are guided by these stakeholders in addressing issues such as personnel development, statewide assessment, and progress monitoring through a unified planning process. ISES is the unification of what were previously the Partnership Committee on Special Education (PCSE) and the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) group. The committee is a broadly diverse and representative group of individuals involved in, or concerned with, the education of children with disabilities. ISES meets twice annually. This meeting was June 9, 2011, and the next meeting is scheduled for December 9, 2011.

June 2011's meeting had a typical number of participants, with 71 stakeholders supported by 5 workgroup facilitators and 5 CalSTAT staff members. More CDE staff attended than were recorded due to a large number of unregistered attendees who walked in.

ISES Meeting June 2011 Page 2 The meeting included three major activities:

• Welcome and Framing, a brief discussion of the day's activities with Janet Digmon, followed by a welcome and update from the Director of the Special Education Division, Dr. Fred Balcom.
• Updates and current issues, rounded out the rest of the morning session. This included an update on the outcome of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)'s recent verification review and discussion of disproportionality measures with Chris Drouin, Associate Director. Valodi Foster also provided an overview and update of after school programs.
• Workgroups to facilitate small-group discussion of SPP indicators and generate recommendations. There was also a workgroup dedicated to discussion of the State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG). The workgroups were rated with an average of 4.1 (on a 5-point scale).

Indicator workgroups are a focal point of the ISES meeting, where participants discuss progress and collaborate to generate recommendations. Recommendations are reported out to all ISES participants in a final group session, are posted online, and inform development of the SPP and implementation of improvement strategies.

Anonymous end-of-event surveys were distributed to participants at the beginning of the event and collected at the end. Of the 81 participants who registered, 33 completed end-of-event surveys. Due to the fact that many of the facilitators and CDE staff feel completing a survey would be inappropriate, this number suggests a response rate of roughly 50% among other participants.

Participants rated the meeting from one ("poor"/"no") to five ("great"/"definitely") in response to four questions. Responses ranged from 1 to 5, with an average response between 4.1 and 4.2. Participants were also invited to respond in more detail to the open-ended questions which are summarized on page 4.

• While these scores are broadly consistent with past ISES meetings, it is noteworthy that two items, "Overall, how was the meeting?" and "Was the meeting of value in advancing the goals/vision of the SPP," were slightly lower than at the previous ISES meeting. This reflects an ongoing, general trend of ISES meeting responses slipping slightly lower at each meeting.
• Leading participant suggestions for improving the meeting revolved around providing more time for discussion and distributing materials and documents in advance (to save time in the meeting).