It was a good week in special education departments statewide as they received a pat on the back from the South Dakota Department of Education for hitting federal and state targets for services for students with special needs.

"We're very pleased with all of our districts," Ann Larsen, South Dakota Special Education Director, said during a phone interview.

The state is one of 17 to earn the highest ratings possible under Parts B and C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, commonly referred to as IDEA. The U.S. Department of Education released the information to states last week. IDEA Part B monitors the effectiveness of special education services at the preschool and K-12 levels, while Part C refers to the state's Birth to Three program, which serves younger children.

The data studied was from fiscal year 2007.

Under Part B, South Dakota has met or exceeded standards in 13 of the 16 public reporting areas required by the U.S. Department of Education. In two of the areas, South Dakota has higher targets than those outlined by No Child Left Behind for students with disabilities. South Dakota students with disabilities have met those higher percentages for both graduation and statewide assessment participation rates.

"In South Dakota, more than 81 percent of students with disabilities who left secondary education during or immediately following the 2006-2007 school year are either enrolled in post-secondary education, employed or both one year later," Larsen said in a prepared statement. "That speaks very highly of these young people."

Marsha Burgraff, special education director at the Custer School District, was pleased with the news but said there is still more work to do.

"I was generally pleased with the performance we achieved," she said. "I think, as always, it's a challenge in the areas of reading and math to have our students with special needs be able to achieve the efficiency levels. We're still not quite at the state targets, and we will continue to focus on those areas."

The IDEA targets are separated into two sections: compliance checks and performance checks. Compliance checks are mandated by the federal government and require an improvement plan if not met. If a district continues to not meet the federal compliance target, federal funding is at risk.

In a separate category, performance targets are set by a statewide performance task force that includes educators from around the state at all levels of K-12 and post-secondary education.

Troy Volesky, special education director at the Rapid City School District, said the district's scores are comparable with last year, with the district meeting all of the compliance indicators.

"Which is what we really look at," he said. "We get excited about those. Especially times of late, if you go into corrective action, they could take away your funding."

Volesky said the state performance scores are also a good measuring stick.

"They're all big; we want to meet any accountability plans out there, but most importantly, we want to be in compliance with what the law is requiring," he said.

The district employs 180 certified staff in the special education department and 350 total staff.

"I just feel like the work they do reflects well on them," he said.

Larsen said she was particularly pleased with the federal compliance check results for the state that showed whether or not districts have a disproportionate number of racial and ethnic groups in special education or related services because of inappropriate identification. Rapid City was compliant in that area and also succeeded in an area officials say is more challenging for larger districts: evaluation timeline, which requires 100 percent of children, who have parental consent, to be evaluated within 25 school days.

Rapid City was 100 percent compliant.

That compliance check "is very difficult to meet, especially if you're a big district," Larsen said. "… They've done a very good job."

Although the sample size of data available for some West River school districts was too small to be included in a graduation rate count, three of the four districts checked for performance met the state's target graduation rate for special education students of 82 percent.

Meade School District was the lone school to carry a 100 percent graduation rate; Spearfish 88.2; Eagle Butte 86.7; and Rapid City missed the target with 74.2 percent.

Many of the districts also met a performance check that studied parental involvement. Although many of the districts met the goal of 63 percent of parents agreeing the district communicated well with them, the response rate for the question was less than 15 percent.

"We've tried a number of different ways to get responses on that questionnaire," Burgraff

said, with little luck.

The questionnaire is from the department of education, and answers are later compiled by Black Hills State University, so people might possibly feel disconnected from it because it isn't tailored by each school, she said. And because it is anonymous, there's no way to follow up with people who haven't returned the survey.

And the people who do respond are usually of one extreme or another, she said.

"You get people extremely pleased or extremely displeased with services," she said.

The entire report reflects well on special education staff statewide, Larsen said.

"You have no idea the amount of data collection at the district level, which was needed for the state level, to be collected for the federal level," she said. "We're very happy with our state determination."

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com