Running head: FINAL CASE STUDY

Final Case Study

Natalie Torti
Gannon University
Mrs. Nancy Morris
February 23rd, 2017
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Introduction

Summary of Community Demographics

The Environmental Charter School is an inner city public charter school in Pittsburgh,
PA. According to City-data.com, Pittsburgh is a mid-size city with a population of 305,412
people. The median income for a Pittsburgh household is $41,293. Pittsburgh has a somewhat
diverse population with the following demographics: 63% caucasian, 24% black, 6% asian, 3%
hispanic, and 4% biracial or multiracial (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2016). The Environmental
Charter School a school of choice under a charter from Pittsburgh Public Schools. We serve
students from over 30 different zip codes and within and surrounding the city of Pittsburgh
(Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2016).

Summary of Environmental Charter School Demographics

Mirroring the makeup of Pittsburgh itself, our student body is around 66% caucasian,
20% black, 6% biracial, 4% hispanic and 3% asian. This demographic makeup is comparable to
the average of schools around the city and state. Thirty percent of our student body is eligible for
free or reduced lunch and are classified as economically disadvantaged (Environmental Charter
School, 2016). Comparatively, 60% of Pittsburgh Public Schools students are economically
disadvantaged (PDE, 2016). Environmental Charter School qualifies for Title I funding.

According to my interview with Ali Rendulic, our special education coach, out of the 630
students enrolled, we have 74 students who qualify for special education services. We currently
only have one student placed out of our school at an out of district placement. Our percentage of
special education students is comparable to schools surrounding us, in that it is only 0.6% higher
than Allegheny countys average . It is also 0.4% lower than the state average(PDE, 2016). Of
our 74 students who receive special education support; 26 students have been diagnosed with
specific learning disabilities, 21 students have a speech and language diagnosis, 9 qualify under
the other health impairment categorization, 8 students have an emotional disturbance diagnosis, 7
students qualify due to autism spectrum disorders, 2 students have an intellectual disability, and
1 student has a hearing impairment (Rendulic, 2017).

Per Pupil Spending at the Environmental Charter School

According to Pennsylvania Department of Education, the per pupil cost of a typical

student at Environmental Charter School [ECS] is $12,402 slightly higher than the state average
of $12,300 (Environmental Charter School, 2016). The cost to educate a student who qualifies
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for special education is $27,270 (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2016). This high cost
per pupil is likely a byproduct of our co-teaching and full inclusion practices. According to the
2009 costing out report, Pittsburgh Publics spending is $13,154 per pupil. This is over the
recommended costing out amount of $10,501 (Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, Inc. ,
2009). Our school was not included in the report.

Standardized Test Results at Environmental Charter School

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, our our PSSA scores are as
follows: Math 43.5% proficient, English Language Arts 72.7% proficient, and Science 76.6%
proficient (2016). According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Pittsburgh Publics math
proficiency ranged from 18.2 percent in seventh grade to 36.6 percent in third grade. Pittsburgh
Publics English Language Arts proficiency ranged from 39.5 percent proficient in seventh grade
to 49.9 percent proficient in third grade (Chute, 2015). According to PDEs School Performance
profile, Environmental Charter Schools building level academic score is a 61.1. Our
performance profile revealed that we are not making growth in any of our subgroup categories
(Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2016). A grade level breakdown of ECSs 2016 PSSA
scores can be found in Appendix B.

Special Education at Environmental Charter School Summary

Full Inclusion and Co-teaching

The Environmental Charter school is a full inclusion environment. Students are included
in co-taught classrooms and there is no resource room to separate special education students
from typical students. Students only leave the general education classroom to receive specialized
services required by their Individualized Education Plan. Students IEPs are managed by the two
special education teachers in each grade level. Students 504s are managed by our two school
counselors (Sheaffer, 2016).

General education and special education teachers co-teach in each core classroom and
provide necessary accommodations or modifications to the curriculum. Teachers have
collaborative planning time in order to truly collaborate on creation and accommodations of each
unit. All 6 models of co-teaching are utilized. The most used models are team teaching, parallel
teaching, and station teaching. This allows teacher to have a small teacher/student ratio and also
use their own personal strengths in the classroom efficiently (Rendulic, 2017).

Representation of Culturally Diverse Students

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To learn more about the representation of culturally diverse students at ECS, I interviewed
Special Education Coach and Advocate, Ali Rendulic. She was able to provide me with the
demographic information in Appendix A which shows our students receiving special education
services. We created a chart which compares the percentage of each demographic in the school
population to the percentage of students of that demographic who have an IEP (Rendulic, 2017).

According to the demographic breakdown chart, we do not over represent culturally and
linguistically diverse students in our SPED identification. But we also do not have a large
number of students who would qualify as linguistically diverse (Rendulic, 2017). This lack of
ELL students seemed like it did not represent the diverse student population.

In an additional interview with Rachel Lendayk-Peters, our Gifted Coordinator and ESL
instructor, Rachel verified my observation. She explained that we have many immigrant
students, students who speak multiple languages at home. However, these students simply
haven't qualified as ELL. In fact, in our 6th grade class 10% of our students are immigrants.
According to the chart in Appendix A and our interview, we are not overidentifying these
students as having special needs, as none of these students had IEPs (Lendayk-Peters, 2017).

Response to Intervention

The Environmental Charter school uses a multi-tiered support system to address student
needs. This process includes both social emotional and academic needs. The MTSS/RTI team
meets twice monthly, and uses MAPS data, AIMSWEB data, as well as data from local
assessments to address academic needs. We also use a behavior indicator scale to rate students
social emotional needs (Rendulic, 2017).

Students receive intervention for a 30 minute period each day. Research based
interventions are implemented in all tier 2 and 3 groups. Student progress is monitored in these
groups through intervention assessments/tracking (Rendulic, 2017). This 30 minute intervention
schedule rotates between math and reading days. I used the PATTAN and the RTI Action
Network checklist (In Appendix C) to analyze the status of our current system and found that the
system was being fully implemented.

Summary of Concerns

In Appendix D, I have documented the restraining forces and driving forces surrounding
the main concern we have as a school community (Vidergar, 2012). Our math PSSA scores are
unacceptably low and we need a systematic overhaul of our math programming to address that
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deficit. Our school school has not been able to remedy these scores despite making changes in
the past few years (Rendulic, 2017). We have recently adopted a new math curriculum, however
the curriculum aligns to common core and not PA core standards.

One circumstance that makes improvement specifically urgent is that our charter will be
under review by Pittsburgh Public soon. They could use poor math scores as a reason to dissolve
our charter. We have that as a restraining force, but it also activates us to take action. We also
pride ourselves on being a science based school and our science scores reflect that dedication.
Unfortunately, most advanced science fields require excellence in mathematics as well. This is
also both an activating and restraining force because with that expectation we also have
commitment from our parents, students, and teaching community (Rendulic, 2017).

Another weakness that I have identified through our class is the lack of adequate time in
our schedule for Response to Intervention. I believe this lack of time is responsible for the fact
that our subgroups of historically disadvantaged students are not making adequate growth.
Although there is currently a designated time period for intervention to happen, it is currently
only 30 minutes each day. We have math intervention on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
We hold reading/ELA intervention on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Obviously, many students who are in tier-2 or 3 support for one content area also need
higher level support in the other content as well. The rationale behind giving 3 days to math,
instead of going every other day is two-fold. First, our math scores are the greatest need. Second,
our school has half days every other Friday so we do not have intervention time during those
days (Slider, Francestine, Brown, Stehouwer, & Torti, 2017).

The last concern identified is the consistency of professional development surrounding

special education, RtII, and co-teaching. Throughout this class, I interviewed various members of
our organization and the level of training or professional development each new hire was given
varied greatly year to year (Slider, Francestine, Brown, Stehouwer, & Torti, 2017). Co-teaching
and Response to Intervention both require adequate time and support to successfully implement
and the lack of consistency in our training is a definite concern (Rendulic, 2017).

Recommendations

Three Recommendations

After reviewing the concerns, I have developed three recommendations to move our
school forward. The first is to redesign the math curriculum, adapting a PA core focused
curriculum that spans kindergarten to eighth grade. The second is to build additional time into
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our schedule in order to create a second period for intervention each day. The third is to create a
consistent professional development schedule for new hires.

To restructure the math curriculum we will convene a working group of math educators
from our building in the coming months. The goal of this group will be to find a K-8 math
curriculum that is PA core standards aligned, uses research-proven strategies, and has proven
results. The math educators will review curriculum and choose two that they feel best align to
our overall philosophy, mission, and vision. Then the entire math team will have the chance to
review the curriculums and vote on their choice to implement in fall of 2017.

In order to solve our issue of only having one intervention period, we will shorten our
homebase time. We currently have homebase from 8am to 9am. Most buses arrive at 8:30 am
and we begin morning meeting during that time. I would suggest we shorten homebase to end at
8:30 am. This way we can use the extra half an hour in our schedule interventions for both math
and reading each days.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to create a consistent on-boarding process for new
staff. I believe we may need to schedule additional days or hours with new staff at the beginning
of the year to ensure that appropriate training can occur. My suggestion would be to add 2
additional days to the beginning of the year to allow new staff to come in and be training. During
those days training on the models of co-teaching would be taught. New teachers would also learn
about available supports and resources for co-teaching, including meeting with their content
coaches and human resources about conflict resolution processes.

New teachers would also be trained extensively in response to intervention and the value
that the multi-tiered support system brings to a learning community. They will also be
specifically trained on the interventions they will be implementing in the coming year. Then
they will be paired with supports and resources for running a successful RtII, including meeting
with our special education advocate/coach and school psychologist.

Although on-boarding typically happens at the beginning of each school year, I think it is
important to have a plan for on-boarding staff who may join us mid-year. This would have to be
a process that lives with our district administration, as coaches and principals would be unable to
dedicate days of training to each new hire. It is also important that coaches, principals, and
district leadership know their role in supporting new staff as they take on these new
responsibilities.

My Role As a Principal
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As a principal, my role will be varied in each of these changes. In the first change,
choosing and implementing a new curriculum. I will need to make the time and space for the
math team to meet, which may include hiring substitute teachers during the meeting times. I will
empower the math coach with time and resources to choose the math curriculas they will review.
I will also help the math coach and team present their chosen curriculum to the board to help get
it approved. Lastly, I will be the first point of contact for parents, sending out a letter explaining
why the math curriculum has changed.

To help facilitate the change to our schedule, I will be on the front lines of drafting the
new schedules over the summer to implement in the fall. I will be flexible working with
specialists and grade level teams to make sure the schedules work to meet their needs, for
example that they have proper lunch and planning breaks during the day. I will communicate
why the change was necessary to the staff and support any struggles and pain points that occur as
the change is implemented. Lastly, I will help communicate to the parents why intervention
periods are important for our students growth.

To facilitate the change in our on-boarding procedures. I would first reach out to the
district administration to ensure they will approve adding days to the new teacher professional
development schedule. Next, I would meet with coaches and administrators to assign them
trainings to create as their responsibility. Over the summer, they will develop these trainings or
find organizations that offer them. I will communicate this change to the staff and support the
great work that will be done in that first week of professional development.
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Reference page

Chute, E. (2015, September 29). State PSSA test scores. Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Retrieved
February 7, 2017, from
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2015/09/29/Fewer-students-score-proficient-on-sta
te-PSSAs-due-to-new-Common-Core-pennsylvania/stories/201509290172

Environmental Charter School. (2016). Retrieved February 17, 2017, from

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/environmental-charter-school-at-frick-pa-profile

Lendayk-Peters, Rachel. (2017, January). English Language Learners [Personal interview].

Pennsylvania Department of Education. (2016.). Performance Profile: Environmental Charter

School. Retrieved February 17, 2017, from http://paschoolperformance.org/Profile/7239

PDE. (2016.). Performance Profile: Pittsburgh Public Schools. Retrieved February 17, 2017,
from http://paschoolperformance.org/Profile/362

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2017, from

http://www.city-data.com/city/Pittsburgh-Pennsylvania.html

Rendulic, Ali. (2017, February 7). Special Education Demographics [Personal interview].

Sheaffer, N. (n.d.). Special Education and Inclusion. Retrieved February 17, 2017, from
https://ecspgh.org/our-practices/inclusion/

Slider, B., Francestine, M., Brown, A., & Stehouwer, D. (2017, February 7). Professional
Development Training [Personal interview].

2009 Special Education Report. (2009, February 01).

doi:http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/CostingOut_PASpecialEd_2_6_09.pdf

Vidergar, K. (2012, April). Word Document. North Polk Community School District.
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Appendix A

Total Students with IEPs = 74

Total Enrollment = 630

Demographic Breakdown
Male Female White Multi- African Hispanic Asia Free/ ELL
Racial American n Reduced
Lunch

School 50 50 66% 6% 20% 4% 3% 30% >1%

Total %

IEP 47 27 52 4 16 1 1 41 0
Total #

IEP 64% 36% 70% 6% 22% 1% 1% 55% 0%

Total %
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Appendix B
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Appendix C
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Appendix D

Force Field Analysis

Source: School Leaders Guide to Root Cause Analysis Using Data to Dissolve Problems, Paul G. Preuss, pp 88-89
(adapted)

Driving Forces Restraining Forces

School Vision - focus on math and science Teacher Autonomy- Desire to shape
curriculum

Parents -chose our school due to STEM School Vision- PBL Focus
focus

Co-teaching(special education teacher Lack of scaffolding of math skills

with general education teacher in each between grade levels
math classroom)

Highly qualified and experienced math Present levels of math test results below
team 40%

Desired State:
Meeting AYP Growth Advanced or Proficient on the Math PSSAs

Students are motivated and interested Intervention limited to 30 minutes 3

in math times a week

Data from AIMSWEB, PSSA's, and MAPS Charter up for review by Pittsburgh
testing Public Schools