The Mississippi Department of Education recently gave the Kosciusko School District special education program high marks – a perfect score on compliance and “meets expectations” on results, scoring 43 of the 63 point available.
“Historically, we’ve always done really well with compliance. We need to be looking at our results indicators. We were very pleased to fall into the ‘meets expectations’ category, which is the highest category,” said Jennie Cook, Special Education director.
The district appears to perform at its best in early education and at the higher levels, just prior to graduation, given the results.
“I think we do a really good job with including our special needs students in our regular programs, and we’ve also done very well with early identification with three- to five-year-olds, getting them what they need and then letting them go,” she said.
Part of that has been developing an inclusive Pre-K program.
“It was with the sole purpose to make sure our students with special needs were being included at that age group,” Cook said.
The district also earned all available points in the area of Secondary Transition and Post-School Outcomes. The district is required to follow up with special education graduates a year after graduation and track how they have done.
Some 67 percent of Kosciusko special education graduates go on to some higher education following graduation, well above the state average 29 percent. All of the students are either pursuing further education or are competitively employed within a year of graduation, compared to an average of 67 percent across the state.
Transitional Coordinator Lindsay Dickerson said a good relationship outside the district helps set graduating students on a positive course.
“The Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services transitional counselor starts working with our students in their junior year,” she said.
Although the overall reports are good, Cook said there are areas where improvements can be made. When the district started receiving indications that assessment results, particularly math, were lower than desired for special needs students, she said they looked at them closely and acted upon what they learned.
“The data on that population (second to seventh grade) is particularly frustrating for me because they only focus on assessment,” she said.
But that same data did point to action that could be taken to improve numbers going forward. The problem for these students on math assessments was not computation, but comprehension.
“This is why we put reading specialists in place, in the hope of remediating that in a more intensive fashion,” said the director. “We’re hoping to see some positive outcomes from that.”
Cook also noted that - although many students with disabilities are academically highly capable - none were enrolled in dual enrollment or AP classes during the 2015-16 academic year examined in the report.
“Why are we not pushing these students to take dual credit?” she said. For the most recent school year, there are two special education students enrolled in at least one dual credit course, but Cook believes more special education students could be encouraged in that direction.
“We’re working together to come up with the best ways to help our students overcome some of their deficiencies,” she said.
