Few scores could spell big change to Iowa AEAs

The scores of less than 1 percent of the Iowa students in special education are being cited by the governor as the primary reason she is proposing to overhaul the state’s area education agencies that for decades have worked with schools to educate students with disabilities.

The scores of these students — about 265 with Individualized Education Plans who took a national test in reading and an additional 265 with IEPs taking the test in math — are being used to represent about 70,000 Iowa students in special education.

“Iowa students with disabilities are performing below the national average,” Gov. Kim Reynolds in January told lawmakers in a televised address. “In the last five years, they’ve ranked 30th or worse on nine of 12 national assessments. Yet, Iowa spends over $5,300 more per-pupil on special education than the national average.”

Her office told The Gazette those comments were based on results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card. But these scores representing relatively so few students nationwide should not be the lone factor when proposing education policy changes, several educators and a statistician for the National Center for Education Statistics said.

The state’s nine area education agencies provide special education to school districts in their boundaries and assist with classroom equipment and media services, professional development and talented and gifted instruction, among other services.

An Individualized Education Plan is a legal document for students who need special education. It’s created through a team of the child’s parent, educators and special education experts.

For NAEP testing, each student with an IEP takes only one type of assessment in one subject area. Students chosen at random take segments of the entire test, which are then combined and statistically weighted to determine the state achievement for each assessment.

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Reynolds has cited the assessments when talking about Iowa’s special education students “consistently” performing below the national average for students with disabilities.

Grady Wilburn, a statistician with the National Center for Education Statistics, cautioned that the data alone should not be used as a representative sample for students with disabilities in Iowa.

“I think NAEP is good to look at things from a high 30,000-foot perspective, but more granular data is helpful,“ Wilburn said.

In general, test scores for students with disabilities are lower than for students without disabilities. Nationally, there’s a 40-point difference in average NAEP scores between students with and without disabilities.

Iowa’s students with disabilities score statistically similar in reading and math to similar students in dozens of other states, the NAEP results from 2022 show.

Of students with IEPs who took the reading test in 2022, Iowa fourth-graders performed similarly to students in 35 other states and eighth-graders performed similarly to students in 45 other states. In math, Iowa fourth-graders performed similarly to students in 39 other states and eighth-graders performed similarly to students in 45 other states, the results show.

There were 13 states in 2022 where in reading fourth-graders with IEPs performed significantly higher, and three states where eighth-graders performed significantly higher.

In math, there were four states in 2022 where fourth-graders with IEPs performed significantly higher, and two states where eighth-graders performed significantly higher.

A report contracted last fall by Reynolds’ Department of Administrative Services — which has informed bills being considered in the Iowa Legislature — used NAEP to determine that while Iowa spent over $14,000 each on students with disabilities in 2022, the fourth-graders taking the reading test scored at 41st in the nation, while the eight graders scored at 16th in the nation in reading. For math, fourth-graders scores at 32nd and eight graders scored 23rd.

“Additionally, NAEP scores show that academic proficiency scores of Iowa’s students with disabilities have declined since the early 2000s,” the report concluded.

The report did consider performance on statewide assessments, in addition to the national NAEP scores. In the 2023 Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress test, students with disabilities performed up to 45 percent lower than all other students. That same year, other states highlighted in the report — Florida, Georgia, Nebraska and South Dakota — also showed gaps for students with disabilities, but none of those cited were as pronounced as Iowa’s.

The report was created by Virginia-based consult Guidehouse, which also generated recommendations in 2022 forming the basis of a broad restructuring of state government.

Ted Stilwell, who served as director of the Iowa Department of Education under Republican Gov. Terry Branstad and Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack, said the conclusions reached in the Guidehouse report are flawed.

A small point difference in the score can translate into a seemingly big difference in the national ranking. Take, for instance, the fourth-grade math results, where Iowa students with disabilities ranked 32nd in 2022. Those students scored only 1 point lower than the national average.

“If you’ve talked to a statistician, not a very significant difference,” Stilwell said.

In other tests, the eighth-graders were 2 points short of the national average in reading and math, although the fourth-graders scored 7 points below the national average in reading.

Still, those test scores do not justify Reynolds’ proposal to limit the services provided by the area education agencies and to centralize special education oversight in a new division within the Iowa Department of Education in Des Moines, Stilwell argued.

“Certainly, those results could be better,” Stilwell said. “Everyone would like students with disabilities to achieve at a higher level. But to say they’re way behind the national average is just not correct.”

Test scores alone do not determine the achievement for students in special education, educators say.

Cindy Yelick, chief administrator of Central Iowa’s Heartland AEA, said a better indicator of achievement for students with disabilities might be graduation and dropout rates.

The graduation rate for Iowa children with disabilities rose from almost 70 percent in 2016 to just over 80 percent in 2020. The dropout rate for students with IEPs was almost 20 percent in 2016, but decreased to about 17 percent in 2020, according to data collected by area education agencies.

“Those are two large, easily accessible indicators that consultants had their hands on, but chose to ignore,” Stilwell said.

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In an editorial board meeting last month with The Gazette, Grant Wood AEA chief administrator John Speer said the drive behind the proposed legislation is “to better support special needs students and students with disabilities.”

But it’s “unclear” in the proposed bills how the changes would improve outcomes for students in special education, said Speer, who leads the AEA that serves 32 public school districts in a seven-county region, including Linn and Johnson.

"We’ll co-own test scores and the achievement gap for students in special education with districts and the (Iowa Department of Education), but is it fair to pin an entire achievement gap on the AEA? We don’t think it is,“ Speer said.

"There are pieces of data where we are best in the nation. Graduation rates for students with IEPs has increased over the last 10 years. We’re top 10 in the nation for graduation rates of special needs students,” he said.

Heartland’s Yelick said it doesn’t make sense to base such a large-scale decision of changing what services area education agencies can provide on such a small sample size of students.

“Standardized tests are one data point at one point in time and do not tell the story of special education students,” Yelick said.

Lawmakers should look at test scores in conjunction with what progress students have made on their IEP goals and other indicators, Yelick said. This could include the graduation rate and special education student’s life after high school, whether that be meeting their goals of living independently, pursuing job training, enrolling in college or other postsecondary education, she added.

“To say we’re going to measure state performance off something school districts aren’t using to measure student achievement — I don’t think it’s important,” Yelick said.

In an interview Friday with educators on the Iowa PBS show “Iowa Press,” Woodward-Granger Community School District Superintendent Mark Lane also said he doesn't view NAEP as a relevant measure of student achievement for his school district.

"I'm much more interested at the state level like on our Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress. And even more relevant to us is the daily assessments that we're giving to students that inform teacher decisions,“ said Lane, who leads the 1,200-student district northwest of Des Moines that’s part of the Heartland AEA.

"Whatever is happening closest to the student I think is most powerful for making educational decisions," Lane said.

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Proposed bills

House File 2612 would allow school districts to retain the state funding that now goes to the AEAs for special education, media and other services, beginning in the 2025-26 school year. It also would bring much of the oversight of the AEAs under the Department of Education.

House Republicans proposed the legislation after blocking Reynolds’ bill calling for more dramatic changes early in the session.

Under the House version, districts would have to use the special education funds with the AEAs. But they could spend the other dollars with the AEAs or with another party, like a private company.

Senate Republicans advanced a bill that more closely aligns with Reynolds’ bill, allowing school districts to contract with outside entities to provide special education support.

Under the Senate bill, schools would receive 90 percent of their state special education funding, while the AEAs would receive the other 10 percent. The school districts could spend their money on the AEAs’ services or contract with an outside party instead.

The bill would direct 60 percent of the funding for media services and education services, which are paid with property taxes, to the school districts, who could then contract with the AEAs or another party for those services. The AEAs would retain the other 40 percent of the funding.

It also would create a Division of Special Education, directing the Department of Education to work with the AEAs on a plan to transfer employees focused on oversight to the department.

Iowa Special Education System Report_FINAL (1) by The Gazette on Scribd

Erin Murphy of The Gazette’s Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com