An advisory group of the Louisiana Department of Education met Tuesday to discuss special education in the state and how to improve it. The Special Education Advisory Panel didn’t directly address policy changes during their meeting, but had a discussion on updating and expanding a plan already in place. The U.S. Department of Education implemented something called the state systemic improvement plan back in 2015. It is a used as a federal indicator for growth at the state level, and is required by the department. The plan has five required components: theory of action, measurable result, infrastructure improvement strategies, evidence based practices, and evaluation. For the expansion piece, the panel focused on the measurable result. Right now, the goal of this result is to increase ELA proficiency on state wide assessments for students with disabilities in grades 3-5. At the beginning of their presentation the panel stated that when the Feds first implemented this plan, they recommended to start small and eventually scale up. Nearly ten years later, the state department has not scaled up. What the panel suggests is to increase their focus from grades third through fifth to grades kindergarten through fifth. Because it’s special education, the original suggestion from the department was to focus on a cohort of schools with a high number of mentally disabled students. This resulted in their evaluation solely considering 28 schools across eight school systems. These were also primarily in south Louisiana, isolating northern parish schools. Now, the panel suggests they expand this cohort to consider a wider range of schools with kids in need of special education. For the updating piece of their considerations, the panel focused on infrastructure improvement strategies. The Louisiana Legislature in 2023 passed a law requiring new literacy screeners for students in grades kindergarten through third grades. The panel wants to expand their strategies and evaluations to consider data from both the relatively new screener and the ELA portion of the LEAP test. They also want to ensure they are aligning with other state initiatives, which The Center Square has reported previously.