Data

Data is collected annually from LEAs and analyzed by the IDRC. Please contact IDOE's Senior Special Education specialist, or IDRC's Disproportionality Coordinator for your district's most recent data. These data are critical in the identification of racial and ethnic disparities throughout the state of Indiana in school discipline and in special identification and placement. The data can serve as a lens through which policies and practices can be examined, evaluated, and re-aligned in order to increase equity in schools.

Key Roles for Data

• Improving the quality of criteria used in problem-solving and decision making
• Describing institutional processes, practices and progress in schools and districts
• Examining institutional belief systems, underlying assumptions, and behaviors
• Mobilizing the school or district community for action
• Monitoring implementation of reforms
• Accountability
• Identify the Action of Greatest Potential Impact

Special Education Disproportionality Data

Data is collected annually from LEAs, analyzed by the IDRC and then posted to the password protected website Equity in Indiana for school corporations to review. This data is critical in the identification of racial and ethnic disparities throughout the state of Indiana in school discipline and in special education identification and placement. The data can serve as a lens through which policies and practices can be examined, evaluated, and re-aligned in order to increase equity in schools.

Alternate Assessment Disproportionality

Disproportionality in alternate assessment exists when there are atypical differences in the proportions of participants from a student group who take the alternate assessment in comparison to the general assessment. The Every Student Success Act (ESSA) established a 1% cap on alternate assessment participation. Below find information by the Indiana Department of Education on how the state is monitoring and calculating disproportionality in alternate assessment participation.

• ESSA's 1% Cap on Alternate Assessment Participation: Disproportionality Calculations PDF | Video
• ESSA's 1% Cap on Alternate Assessment LEA Data Webinar PDF | Video
• Explanation of Disporportionality in Alternative Assessment Participation 
• 1% Dispro Workbook (Downloadable Excel File)

Using the Data

The following questions are meant to serve as beginning prompts to support conversations about inequity, particularly about disproportionality. Note that they move from description to analysis to problem-solving. Facilitators may need to use more prompting questions to guide participants to bring in questions about race/ethnicity, over-referral from one teacher, etc.

1. What does the data tell you?
2. What trends do you notice?
3. Are there any surprises?
4. What is missing? What else would you like to know?
5. What are the implications for our school and our students?
6. Is every student benefitting from what we are doing?
7. Are all groups benefitting equally?
8. Are all groups participating and achieving equally?
9. What do we want/need to measure?
10. What are the gatekeepers of achievement in our school? In our society?
11. What are good measures that will tell us about how are students are doing?
12. How can we assess how we are doing with regard to equity?