Critics say RIDE special ed review is insufficient

Members of the Warwick Public Schools community are again at odds with the administration, this time in regards to the Rhode Island Department of Education’s interim review of the secondary level special education program.

“We always have things to work on, but I’m encouraged that RIDE came out and looked at our whole special ed system and didn’t find anything alarming or any bad practice,” Superintendent Philip Thornton said after the review’s release.

In a previous interview with the Beacon, Special Services Director Jennifer Connolly described a few key aspects of the review. She discussed how the review found some student specific compliance issues (i.e. “some boxes weren’t checked off and some dates weren’t filled out”) that required corrective actions, but these were not widespread. She noted that the review also found Warwick is “disproportionate” and over-identifies students in total, which according to Connolly, means there are too many students in certain disability categories who have IEPs (she said there are 1,428 students total on IEPs).

But Connolly’s main point seemed to remain that “There are no widespread illegal practices happening – there’s no finding to that effect in this report.”

Still, those who have been vocal about special education issues and who had endorsed a third party investigation of the program felt otherwise. Teachers Union President Darlene Netcoh said she didn’t feel the review looked “deeply enough” and said “anecdotally, I know of a lot of problems.”

Added Nathan Cornell, co-chair of the Community Outreach Educational Committee, “Despite the School Administration's spin, the RIDE Report does not actually say there are 'no widespread illegal practices,' there is a pattern of troubling practices documented in the report. We should also be discussing the drop in Special Education graduation rates since 2013, which is also outlined in the report.”

The 40-page review states that Warwick’s graduation rates for students with disabilities are currently lower than state averages – 80.6 percent for all students and 61.2 percent for students with disabilities as opposed to the state average of 83.2 percent for all students and 67.6 percent for students with disabilities. In 2013, when the last review was done, those rates were higher than state averages at 81.51 percent for all students and 66.29 percent for students with disabilities as opposed to state averages of 77.25 percent for all students and 58.07 percent for students with disabilities.

Anthony Sinapi, a lawyer and special education advocate, also took issue with the school department’s characterization of the review, saying the review “often seemed illustrative of the issues people have been complaining about for months,” like “lower graduation rates among students with disabilities as compared to state average, higher dropout rate among students with disabilities as compared to state average.”

“Again, validating exactly what people have been complaining about, were some of the general patterns found, i.e. incomplete transition services and/or lacking current vocational assessments and no meeting notice evidence to indicate consideration of postsecondary and transition services,” he said.

Ward 2 Councilman Jeremy Rix said as of Friday that he had only briefly reviewed the RIDE report, but did have some initial reactions to what he’d read.

“I do think that one of my first thoughts is that it’s certainly important to note that there has been a documented pattern of [violations] by the School Committee and by Warwick Schools when it comes to IEPs and that is very concerning,” Rix said. “I understand that the Superintendent and/or the School Committee is trying to lay out a narrative that these violations were not ‘widespread’ but it’s my understanding that on review of the report, RIDE does not make a finding in those terms and what the RIDE report does indicate is that there is certainly a pattern of violations.”

In answers to questions as to how a third party “investigation” voted on by the City Council in the winter (the resolution was taken off the table at a Council meeting a few months back) may have been different from what RIDE did, all four expressed in some form that they felt RIDE wasn’t impartial enough an entity – a third party investigation may have gone deeper and been more “revealing,” they said.

“RIDE is not going to come in and acknowledge wholesale problems in a district. I have found that over the years when there’s some kind of question about what a school district is doing, RIDE tends to back the school district,” Netcoh said.

Connolly had previously said she wasn’t sure how such an investigation could have even happened without violating student confidentiality. So was that something the Council considered? Rix thinks so.

“I certainly think the Council considered that factor and of course [in] any investigation, any student information would have to be kept highly confidential just as it’s kept highly confidential during a RIDE investigation,” he said.

Reached on Monday, RIDE said “we don't have any comment on the remarks from the Council.” School Committee Chair Beth Furtado did not respond to request for comment. The full review can be read at www.ride.ri.gov/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Information-and-Accountability-User-Friendly-Data/Accountability/reports/Warwick_Public_Schools.pdf.