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Palo Alto Unified School District Special Education Metrics

Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) Special Education / Students With Disabilities Demographics (2019,2022)

The state counts things... bizarrely and samples different data at different times, so numbers never line up. Welcome to California.
JurisdictionSchool YearTotal Student PopulationStudents With Disabilities PopulationPercentage Students with Disabilities
PAUSD202110754108710.1%
PAUSD20191199211449.5%
California20196,186,278725,41211.7%
PAUSD202210509106910.2%
California20225,892,240745,51312.7%

Question – is PAUSD under-identifying SWD

Issue – data is not available on students who only have 504 plans

PAUSD Chronically Absent

JurisdictionSchool YearTotal StudentsTotal Absentee PercentageTotal AbsenteeStudents With DisabilitiesAbsentee Percentage SWDAbsentee SWDSWD Absentee Percent of Total Absentee
PAUSD201979965.9%4718679.5%7816.5%
California2019 4,279,57510.1%429207559,82416.3%9125121.3%
PAUSD2022678510.1%68576618.8%14421%
California20224,009,26030%1202778560,74939.6%22205618.46%

This is depressing across the board. There is a substantial excess number of SWD absentee students.

PAUSD Suspension Data

JurisdictionSchool YearTotal StudentsTotal Suspension PercentageTotal SuspensionsStudents With DisabilitiesSuspension Percentage SWDSuspensions SWDSWD Suspension Percent of Total Suspensions
PAUSD2019123470.9%11113133.1%4136.7%
California20196,362,5073.4%216325823,8056.2%5107523.6%
PAUSD2022109330.7%7712163%3646.75%
California20226,066,0213.1%188047847,7705.4%4578024.3%

This number usually surprises people by how high it is. The proportion of SWD suspensions vs. total suspensions is appalling and should be addressed. You’ll note the lack of an “issue” in the California data as they don’t capture disproportionality problems.

PAUSD English Language Arts Data

The key to look at here is the gap between special education students and their general education peers both at the school district and the state level to see the "relative effectivenss" of the education program for both populations
JurisdictionSchool YearOverall Performance Relative to State StandardSWD Performance Relative to State StandardPerformance Gap
PAUSD2019+78.8-17.996.7
California2019-2.5-88.185.6
PAUSD2022+76.6-43.4120
California2022-12.2-97.385.1

Compared to the state, Palo Alto SWD are doing well.

However, their performance gap grew from 2019 to 2022.

Unfortunately, the state performance is DISMAL.

The Gap analysis shows (or attempts to show) how PAUSD is serving its SWD relative to its general education peers.

PAUSD Mathematics Data

The key to look at here is the gap between special education students and their general education peers both at the school district and the state level to see the "relative effectivenss" of the education program for both populations
JurisdictionSchool YearOverall Performance Relative to State StandardSWD Performance Relative to State StandardPerformance Gap
PAUSD2019+83.2-25.7108.9
California2019-33.5-119.485.9
PAUSD2022+68.3-57.7126
California2022-51.7-130.879.1

Same assessment as for ELA. California overall is DISMAL (when are people going to be ashamed of this?).
The gap between the performance of SWD in Palo Alto is also notably larger than for the state as a whole.

It has also gotten worse in 2022 from 2019.

PAUSD College/Career Readiness

The key to look at here is the gap between special education students and their general education peers both at the school district and the state level to see the "relative effectivenss" of the education program for both populations
JurisdictionSchool YearOverall Readiness PercentageSWD Readiness PercentagePerformance Gap
PAUSD201974.2%24.7%49.5%
California201944.1%10.8%33.3%

This metric is kind of cryptic. It does serve as an interesting alternative to graduation data. Some other states are actually tracking students after graduation which is an excellent idea (notably, Arizona).

Again, the big issue is the gap between general education and SWD.

(Sigh… California as usual. No data on this in 2022).

NOTE: I haven’t gone through and de-duplicated SWD in the overall population which will increase all of these gaps in performance.

PAUSD Graduation Rate

The key to look at here is the gap between special education students and their general education peers both at the school district and the state level to see the "relative effectivenss" of the education program for both populations
JurisdictionSchool YearOverall Graduation RateSWD Graduation RateGraduation Rate Gap
PAUSD201995.4%81.8%13.6%
California201985.8%64%21.8%
PAUSD202296.3%83.9%12.4%
California202287.4%75.2%12.2%

There was a huge improvement in state graduation rates for SWD. They also improved slightly for PAUSD.

Yay!… though with California, one wants to ask more questions.

Final Comments

  1. This shouldn’t have to be so hard. We should be able to pull out data on students with disabilities and parse them both between each school and the state as well as with other schools.
  2. The data is not cleanly separated between “students with disabilities” and their general education peers. This winds up under-counting the gap between the two student populations (I can go back and do this by hand.. but not today)
  3. The other largest population across California, and in PAUSD, that has a massive performance gap are English Learners (who are still learning English). We do not currently have any way to include the overlap between these students and students with disabilities (though the school district could do this analysis).

Other California Special Education Resources

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