Graduation, Inclusion and Local Action

55% of the students who didn’t graduate from high school this past year in my local school district were disabled even though disabled students make up just over 10% of the total student population (1000+ students out of just over 10,000 total students).

How can we do better?

Below are my letters to the Palo Alto Unified School District Trustees for their January 2026 meeting. I also spoke to these same topics during the meeting (see “How to Speak at Public Meetings” and “Why to Speak at Public Meetings“).

Unfortunately, PAUSD has not had graduation data on the board agenda yet this school year. As I am concerned both with the graduation rate for Students With Disabilities (SWD) and the district’s progress on implementing California’s Alternative Diploma, I spoke on that during the Open Forum portion of the meeting (see the letter below).

PAUSD has implemented a meaningful strategic oversight program called “The PAUSD Promise”. I think this is pretty unusual for a school district… even better, they added metrics and goals related to Disabled Learners… BUT… I’m not fond of the specific metrics they are using and so I provided comments on both of those as written comments and verbally during the meeting.

NOTE: I sent the written comments in advance to the appropriate professional staff – they are the ones who are most likely to make changes – whether the board members intervene or not (and, as a practical matter, they may not).

Background

Palo Alto Unified School District is an excellent public school district by virtually any standard or metric – including the academic performance of its disabled students (this was a major reason our family moved here in 2021).

We have had some rough times here, however, as well as some notable successes. I firmly believe that the school district can do much better for all its disabled students – not just select schools or individual classes or teachers.

Our school district has regular public meetings of its school board. I’ve attended almost all of these meetings since we moved here and spoken regularly about special education and disability issues.

I also email (usually extended) versions of my comments to the school board members as well as relevant staff.

Meet/met with board members and school and school district staff as makes sense.

And invited board members, professional staff, and candidates for local office to meet with parents for coffee – 114 sessions and counting.

There is also a local Special Education PTA and a Facebook Group.

Who didn’t graduate from High School and California’s Alternative Diploma (A Letter to the Palo Alto School Board)

In Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) for the school year 2024-25 – 34 students did not graduate within 5 years. A small number out of 960 students, but this cohort of students deserve your attention (see attached).

19 (55%) were Students with Disabilities.

As of 2024, California law supports a diploma program for disabled students who qualify for the alternative assessment (https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/lr/om082523.asp) 

“….diploma options available for students with disabilities, as provided in California Education Code (EC) Section 51225.31 and Section 51225.32, which was included in Assembly Bill (AB) 181, the 2021–22 education omnibus budget trailer bill. This law went into effect June 30, 2022, and was amended first through Senate Bill (SB) 114 on July 10, 2023, as well as SB 141 on September 13, 2023, and most recently through SB 153 on June 29, 2024. LEAs should be offering this pathway for all students who qualify.”

To date, I haven’t heard how PAUSD intends to proactively implement this program to ensure that more students graduate with either a traditional diploma or take advantage of this alternative option.

Today, PAUSD effectively tracks students away from a high school diploma very early – we experienced this in 2nd grade. 

This isn’t just a question for our high school programs, but needs to start earlier to move more of our students with substantial disabilities towards a more rigorous education so that they will be prepared by the time they get to high school.

A high school diploma matters. There is a 30% employment gap for disabled adults. There are 310 programs for students with Intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in the US (https://thinkcollege.net/college-search) … but educational preparation matters*.

I don’t know that many PAUSD teachers, staff, or parents even know that these programs exist .. or the impact that higher expectations can have for disabled learners (or the consequences of low expectations).

I hope you will act to prioritize and support these programs and other efforts to improve educational outcomes for all students… especially students for whom a high school diploma could make a major life difference.

* As of 2010 (updated in 2025), 11% were working full time and 17% were living independently, “…a third of parents have done little to prepare for their child’s future” – https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/life-disparities.php (well worth reading)

3B – PAUSD Promise – Suggested Inclusion Metric & Problem with SWD Goals Metric (Letter to School Board)

Comments on Inclusion and IEP Success for the Promise report…

(ADDITIONAL NOTE – as readers of my newsletter likely have noted, I’ve been writing about inclusion for a while. My core problem with focusing solely on students in the most inclusive settings is that it is (1) Easier to game to make short term gains in this metric. (2) Fails to provide any visibility to the students who are in the most segregated settings. Previously, I’ve looked at the “most segregated” educational settings directly, but people seem to prefer positive metrics, so combining the two most “inclusive” settings gives the same data in a more positive manner)

Measuring Inclusion – Move to >40% in General Education

The district has been measuring inclusion by the % of students who spend 80% or more of their day in general education. Unfortunately, this does not capture reducing the % of students who spend 40% or less of their day in general education – our most segregated classes.

This can be easily corrected as well as giving you insight into placements in non-public schools (NPS) and private schools… and it can be done using existing data.

Currently the Educational Setting for every Student With Disabilities(SWD) is reported on their IEP, rolled up into a district metric, than the state and then nationally. 

The categories are (I may not have this perfectly):

• 80% in general education
• between 40 and 80% in general education
• <40% in general education 
• Non-Public School
• Hospital
• Residential
• Corrective/Penal
• Private Placement

By simply combining the first two categories (adding them) – tracking students who spend more than 40% of their day in general education, you wind up with a better measure of inclusion as you have visibility into all of the segregated settings. It also helps you track the consequences of legal settlements and any other placement outside of “inclusive PAUSD”.

The numbers are already available, so (little) additional work is required.

IEP Success – Drop it. Go to Graduation Rate

I have spoken against tracking progress on IEP goals as a metric for the district. The interim metric of

” 51.7% of goals for students in self-contained programs have been met, with the remainder in progress.”

What does it tell you really?

* I think our own fall report showed 0% of our goals completed… but virtually all were on track to be completed by the anniversary of our IEP (or close)… it may be 1 or 2 out of 20???  But I don’t consider current progress a problem.

* Conversely, when my son was in 3rd grade, we had no agreed to goals so he would have shown as 100% goals completed effectively… and this was a disaster.

* Often at the end of the year, no goals may be 100% met, but sufficient progress has been made that we move on… it is all hand-crafted.

The bottom line is that this raw metric gives you no decision making insight into how our programs are doing for our students with Exceptional Support Needs… presumably why you are seeking data. I am also concerned that this will invite manipulation of goals to feed the Promise metrics if this continues at the expense of goals to meet the student’s individual needs. 

The general problem we have with metrics for ESN students is that they are such a small population in the district … it is around 10% of the SWD population which is around 10% of the total student population… so close to 100 to 120 students in the entire district.

Break that out by grade and you have 10ish students per grade cohort across the whole district…(so there are 2 or 3 students in my son’s grade in his ESN Elementary group).

… and basically you have too few people to do math/statistics with (even ignoring privacy issues).

… and this population is HIGHLY variable by every metric.

The better, though lagging, indicator is the most basic:

Graduation Rate.

That is all of our big goal. 

(If you can separately capture that metric for students under the Alternative Assessment… even better, but that may get close to Privacy Protection limitations – perhaps do a rolling 4-year metric?)

PS – I thought I saw something where our number of Alternative Assessment students was higher in high school… but I haven’t been able to find it again. If so, it is unusual.