The Wawascene was created by Dr. Mark Stock, former Superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corporation. Due to its local popularity, Dr. Stock has left the blog site to future Wawasee administrators.

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Students With Special Needs Across the State

Highest 10 School Corporations
1 Benton Community School Corp 29.6%
2 Kokomo-Center Twp Con Sch Corp 27.2%
3 M S D Mount Vernon 27.1%
4 New Harmony Town & Twp Con Sch 26.7%
5 Richmond Community Schools 26.2%
6 South Henry School Corp 26.1%
7 Southwest School Corp 26.0%
8 Cannelton City Schools 25.8%
9 Muncie Community Schools 25.6%
10 Randolph Central School Corp 25.4%

Lowest 10 School Corporations
285 School Town of Highland 12.0%
286 M S D of New Durham Township 12.0%
287 Greater Jasper Con Schs 11.9%
288 Adams Central Community Schools 11.9%
289 Pioneer Regional School Corp 11.7%
290 Dewey Township Schools 11.3%
291 Westview School Corporation 11.2%
292 Southeast Dubois Co Sch Corp 10.2%
293 Bremen Public Schools 10.1%
294 Northeast Dubois Co Sch Corp 9.8%

State Average 17.9%
Wawasee Average 14.8

OK - now hang with me here. This is a crash course on statistics.

Pearson Correlations

The Pearson R Correlations listed below compare the student special education counts with other statistics and tries to see if they are related to one another. A very high number for a Pearson R (such as .90) means that the two items are highly "co-related." If you "square" .90 (meaning multiply it times itself [.90 x .90] ) you will get .81. This means that 81% of the variation in the numbers on the one statistic are in some way explained by the other statistic. In other words they are highly "correlated."

Pearson Correlations (For All Corporations)
Special Ed Students, Pct 2005-06,

Dec 1 Count with Pearson R Pct of Variation Explained

Free Lunch, Pct Pupils Elig 2006-07 0.3069 9.4%
ISTEP Pct Pass Both Engl and Math 2006-07 -0.3029 9.2%
ISTEP Pct Pass Math 2006-07 -0.3087 9.5%

What does this mean? It means that only 9 % of the variation in percentages of students in special education across the state of Indiana can be explained by poverty or ISTEP scores. And...these were the highest correlations reported. Now - you will notice that the ISTEP Pearson R numbers were negative. This means that as the special education numbers increased, ISTEP pass rates slightly decreased, but still the relationship was not a very strong one across the state.



All data has been taken from the Indiana Department of Education website.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What would cause a corporation to get up to that 25% range? Is there something in the water that they should be checking into, or is it more likely that the cororation has a program that brings in more of the moderate to severe students, thereby bearing their load and some of the surrounding districts' loads also?

Anonymous said...

I don't know if this is the reason why the numbers are up at Wawasee or not. I can tell you that I belong to support groups. In these groups, we do discuss how good schools are. So, it is possible that people move to a certain district because it has a better special ed dept than other area schools.

Anonymous said...

It is also possible that schools would have more students who are listed if they are part of a special ed cooperative or large school district and house specialized programs in order to save financially.

Even at Wawasee, we try to house low-incident disabilities in one elementary school because of the cost-effective nature in doing so. For example, moderate/severe disabilties primarily are serviced at Syracuse Elementary.

Anonymous said...

This a bit off subject, but after seeing the ISTEP scores in the Mail JOurnal, I would be very interested in knowing the breakdown of free/reduced lunch statistics at each school.

Anonymous said...

Milford - 32% F/R
Webster - 37% F/R
Syracuse - 39% F/R
WMS - 34% F/R
WHS - 24$ F/R

The difference in the apparent breakdown can be significant in that it is based on choice data -- in other words, people choose to participate in the free and reduced lunch program. The numbers are significantly less at the high school, but it is more likely that students don't submit the paperwork -- for a variety of reasons.

It is also important that we recognize the significance of statistics like these without allowing them to become an excuse.

For more detailed information on each school, simply go to this website: http://mustang.doe.state.in.us/SEARCH/s3.cfm