District, state fail to meet special ed federal requirements

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - The state and district did not meet federal requirements on several indicators and performance targets, annual reports by the South Dakota Department of Education show.

The report that’s based on the 2018-19 school year shows the state and district did not meet targets such as the graduation and dropout rates, according to the Rapid City Journal.

The target graduation rate for youth with IEPs (individualized education program) graduating from high school with a regular diploma in four years was 85%. The state’s rate was 62.9% and the district’s was 60%.

Rapid City Area Schools and the state also did not meet the statewide proficiency targets for reading and math for children with disabilities on statewide assessments.

For reading, at a goal of 46.07%, the state’s rate was 18.43% and the district’s rate was 17.79%.

In math, the statewide goal was 45.49%. The state’s rate was 16.73% proficiency while the district’s rate was 14.67%.

Todd Christensen, special education program manager, said he’s confident the district will soon come close to meeting their mark by the time data is out for the previous year. He plans to implement new curriculums and have both grade-level teachers and special education teachers participate in professional development to make sure they get the same training.

For child outcomes in the percent of preschool children with IEPs, the district and state both failed to meet the state target in three areas, social-emotional skills, acquisition and use of knowledge and skills, and use of appropriate behaviors.

Social-emotional skills are measured at age 3 and before age 5 to help give a baseline of data in those areas for students, according to Christensen.

“When you look at the report card, we have a lot of things we need to work on and I’m hoping in this next school year that we’re going to see the fruition of these efforts and see some of these things go up,” Christensen said. “I’m very confident in some of these areas that we will see progress.”