KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

On the heels of a report from WSMV, Tullahoma City Schools Director of Schools Dr. Catherine Stephens addressed the report regarding significant disproportionality.

According to the report from WSMV Channel 4, nine school districts in Tennessee, including Tullahoma City Schools (TCS), Maury County and Metro Nashville Public Schools for Middle Tennessee, were identified in the state’s significant disproportionality report for the 22-23 school year.

Per the Tennessee Department of Education, under the Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act, states are required to collect and examine data annually to determine whether significant disproportionality based on race or ethnicity is occurring within districts and the state with respect to:

• Identification of students with disabilities (SWDs), including identification of students in six high-incidence disability categories.
• The placement of SWDs in particular educational settings.
• The incidence, duration, and type of disciplinary actions (specific to SWDs), including suspensions and expulsions.

According to the data from WSMV, the risk ratio of the likelihood of discipline for black students at TCS for the 22-23 school year was 2.40, a significant drop from the 21-22 school year where the risk ratio was 3.03.

At the Nov. 19 meeting, Stephens took time in her report to address the story to the TCS Board of Education. Stephens explained when the state runs discipline reports for a school year, it looks at specific subgroups of students with disabilities, such as white, black, Hispanic, Asian, etc., and the number of disciplinary infractions that populate from that specific subgroup. She continued and said the same data that discipline infraction is pulled for all other students with disabilities not in that specific subgroup.

“Both of these data sets are compared to evaluate or determine if there appears to be an imbalance of discipline being reported or assigned to a specific subgroup,” Stephens said. “This leads to a possible disproportionate finding.”

She said in this process, each of the subgroups are reviewed and compared to their non-subgroup counterpart, and the only subgroup that showed up as disproportionate for TCS was black students with disabilities.

“It’s not just discipline that’s looked at with students with disabilities, it is identification such as emotionally disturbed, other health impaired, are we over identifying potentially under identifying and also educational environment,” Stephens said. “That is how much time students with disabilities are not in the general education setting and we were not shown as disproportionate in any of those areas.”

She reiterated to the board that the disproportionality was identified from the 22-23 school, when TCS had a total of 469 students with disabilities, which 59 of the students were black.

“So, the group of 59 students in that identified subgroup was compared to the 410 students with disabilities not in that subgroup to look for disciplinary infraction counts,” she said. “In the group of 59 students there were 29 disciplinary incidents, in the group of 410 students there were 82 incidents. What this data indicated was there was twice the risk that a black student with disabilities would be disciplined compared to other students with disabilities.”

The most frequent forms of misconduct from the 22-23 school year, according to Stephens, included disruptive conduct, tardies and disrespect of others. She added that most of the incidents took place in the high school setting.

“While this information is centered on a very small number of students we take this information seriously and we respond to it,” Stephens said. “When we were identified as having this disproportionality, which happened a year ago, we informed the administrators, evaluated our practices, and we provided training and support.”

Stephens told the board the district had invested in a program called Why Try, which aims at helping teachers and counselors improve their ability to engage, motivate and build resilience in students.

“We have positive behavior support teams at every school that identify, teach and reinforce positive behaviors in students as well as use proactive strategies to address problematic behaviors and more,” she said. “These are just a couple of the examples of how we responded.”

She said all the district’s principals are tasked with following appropriate disciplinary steps for misconduct based on the system’s code of conduct as one way to ensure appropriate disciplinary practices occur for all students in every subgroup.

Stephens then acknowledged TCS Director of Special Education Dr. Wendy Wilkerson, as she is first person who receives data like the significant disproportionality report, reviews it and ensures accuracy in what’s being reported.

“She also does a great job in appealing in instances when she can appeal when something is inaccurately recorded or reflected,” Stephens said. “Now the state can accept the appeal or deny the appeal but I want to give kudos to Dr. Wilkerson.”