FSA 4: Disproportionate Placement

LEA will review data to determine if they demonstrate disproportionate placement of students with a disability receiving special education supports and services, students who are English Learners (EL), or among racial subgroup populations. Students with disabilities must not be unnecessarily segregated into specific AEDY Programs because of their disability. 

To complete this section of the FSA in Leader Services, do the following:

Resources for Disproportionate Placement

Video Transcript

This section requires information from the LEA lens. Annually, each LEA is required to verify their data through the End of Year Report process. This data then becomes housed on each LEA's dashboard for ease of review. LEAs will have a calculator on their Leader Services dashboard to determine disproportionate representation at any time throughout the year. The program should evaluate any disproportionate representation as well and work to support LEAs.

Slide: AEDY Cyclical monitoring. FSA 4: disproportionate representation.
slide: review of data. The annual End of Year report includes referral data for students with disabilities with a status of In Placement, Transfer to LEA, and Closed. Flowchart: Referrals in EOY reporting must have 10+ referrals of students with disabilities to calculate disproportionate representation data. Left side: If fewer than 10 student referrals, please review data to ensure students with disabilities are not disproportionately placed. Right side: If the number of students is 10 or greater, the team needs to meet and evaluate the data.

When determining disproportionate representation, the threshold for data review is 10 or more students placed in an AEDY program, who are identified as students with disabilities and/or are English Learners. We recommend LEAs also take a look at demographic trends related to race and ethnicity to determine if additional areas need to be addressed on their action plans.

This chart will help stakeholders reflect upon next steps when looking at their data. We want to remind you that the comparison data is only for grades 6-12 as only students in that grade span are allowed to be sent to AEDY. This chart simplifies the areas of review or considerations for the planning team.

Flowchart: Are there 10+ referrals for students with disabilities in EOY data? If yes: review end of year data, disaggregate behavior trends, disaggregate office referrals by building, grade, and teacher, use evaluation data to create an action plan for training and support. If no, review end of year data, create review team, cross reference LEA disciplinary data, review current MTSS framework for positive behavior support. Once the threshold of 10 is met, LEAs need to compare the data against their students in grades 6-12 to make a determination about disproportionate representation.
Slide: resources. Vulnerable decision points webinar, proactive solutions to discipline module, social emotional learning curricula as tier 1 core supports, PDE equity hub, PBIS resources, restorative practice resources, trauma informed care, parent engagement.

We have added the links to the resources in this [module]. Our hope is that your teams use these resources after your data review. Once you determine the possible root cause of the disproportionate representation, you can layout a training that is meaningful to your specific needs within your action plan. 

PaTTAN has a robust repository of training resources and our consultants can support you as you build capacity within your organization. Whether it be as specific as vulnerable decision points or more global as building a secondary MTSS framework for positive behavior support, we have resources to share with you.