Measuring Access to Learning Opportunities (2003) / Chapter Skim
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2. Measuring Equal Opportunity: The Role of the E&S Survey
2. Measuring Equal Opportunity: The Role of the E&S Survey
Pages 19-35
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From page 19... ...
In the greatly transformed educational landscape of the first decade of the 2ist century, it is important to envision specifically what it means to ensure equal access to a high-quality education. Over the years, the ENS survey has broadened its focus to include items that address a wide variety of potential violations of students' civil rights.
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From page 20... ...
Unlike the surveys a(lministere(1 by the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) , for which response is voluntary, schools and school districts are required to respond to the E&S survey and failure to respond could result in the loss of federal financial assistance.3 Response rates are close to 100 percent, so that OCR has a powerful mechanism for measuring compliance with civil rights laws and other public policy purposes.
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From page 21... ...
, it is unlikely that state and local school authorities would collect the key OCR data elements without a mandatory po~icy.4 Data Identifiable for Specific Demographic Groups The E&S survey contains data on access to opportunities to learn that are broken out by race, ethnicity, gentler, and disability status i.e., for those classes of students whose rights are specified in the civil rights laws that are the basis of the E&S survey. Basic racial and ethnic enrollment data were not routinely collected in the Common Core of Data (CCD)
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From page 22... ...
MEASURING ACCESS TO LEARNING OPPORTUNIT Large urban school (listricts, which have a disproportionate share of minority students and students in poverty, have been included among the sampled districts in every administration of the survey. Also included in each administration of the survey are school districts that are under court order to eliminate civil rights violations.
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From page 23... ...
Although the primary use of the survey has been to identify patterns that suggest potential violations of civil rights in individual schools and districts, the OCR also produces state and national data projections from the sampled schools. [inking E&S Data to Other Databases Because the E&S survey is administered so frequently to such a large sample, it is more costly and difficult than it is for smaller scale surveys to include additional questions that would help explain the significance of the simple correlations that can be identified with E&S survey data alone.
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From page 24... ...
Information on classroom assignment is requeste(1 for the lowest anti highest elementary grades only. The civil rights concerns emanate from evidence that many students who are "tracked" on a continuing basis into separate classrooms or groups within classrooms because of their belowgra(le-level performance continue to lose academic groun(1 in these settings, Classroom-level data for elementary schools also are available from the ECLS-K survey for sampled classrooms in the early elementary grades only.
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From page 25... ...
There is no other national database on school disciplinary Substantial racial disparities exist in the administration of disciplinary practices. Data from the 2000 E&S survey show that although only 17 percent of all U.S.
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From page 26... ...
These data cover teacher certification, the consequences of high-stakes testing, the characteristics of special-purpose schools, the number of graduates and type of diploma awarded, segregation, English proficiency, advanced placement classes, gifted and talented programs, and students with disabilities. Most other national survey data tend to be seriously out of date and to have samples that are much too small to be used to study individual states, let alone districts or individual schools.
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From page 27... ...
Sixty percent of all public schools employ only state-certified teachers. Minority enrollment includes American Indians, blacks, and Hispanics.
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From page 28... ...
Education advocates and others are especially concerned that the standards movement and associated high-stakes tests could create incentives for schools to inappropriately place poorly performing students in special education (see National Research Council, 2002b, p.85) , transfer poorly performing students to other schools, or take other actions that woul eliminate them from the pool of tested students.
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From page 29... ...
Little is known about how some of these schools especially charter schools are similar to or different from other schools. According to E&S survey data for 2000, minorities account for 40 percent of the enrollment of charter schools, compared with 30 percent of regular public schools.
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From page 30... ...
OCR defines a certificate of attenJance or completion as "an award of less than a regular diploma, or a modified diploma, or fulfillment of an IEP for students with disabilities./' document patterns of racial segregation and the compliance of districts with desegregation plans. Since 1987, information on the racial and ethnic composition of schools comparable to that collected on the E&S survey has been collected annually in the CCD.
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From page 31... ...
Minority enrollment includes American Indians, blacks, and Hispanics. Data on free and reJuceJ-price lunch eligibility are not available for Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Tennessee, or Washington.
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From page 32... ...
courses taught in high schools. On average, schools with predominantly minority students offer fewer AP courses than schools with predominantly white students (see Appen(lix B)
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From page 33... ...
That year, Congress required OSEP to begin monitoring racial and ethnic disparities in special education placement for the possibility of inappropriate placement (see Hehir, 20021. Since OSEP began to collect disaggregated data in 199S, the data collected by OSEP/OSERS have become essentially redundant with the items on the E&S survey regarding students with disabilities.
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From page 34... ...
Although recognizing the limitations of E&S data when not supplemented with information from other sources, the coeditors of this volume nonetheless argue that data on racial disproportioniiThis report questioned both the validity and the significance of E&S findings of disparities, as well as those based on recent OSEP/OSERS surveys. The report argued that because neither survey provides important information about diagnostic criteria, students' needs, and other background information that could be used to determine the appropriateness of special education services to meet individual students' needs regardless of their race data from these surveys are not helpful in determining whether or not racial disproportionality in special education is actually a problem (National Research Council, 2002b)
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From page 35... ...
In the absence of additional information from other surveys or from field research, the ENS survey data cannot by themselves prove whether racial differences in assignment to special education or other aspects of schooling ROLE OF THE E&S SURVEY that are addressed by the survey are the result of discrimination or constitute violations of students' civil rights. Indeed, the survey was never intended to be used as the sole source of information about discrimination.
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