Study Design and Results

approach framework and philosophical assumtions

Design

Setting and Participants

This study was completed in February 2023 at a central Missouri school district. At the time of this study, the district had a recorded enrollment of 1,529 students, 78.2% of which qualified for free or reduced lunch (MO DESE, 2023). The researcher communicated with the Director of Special Education to request documentation from two MDR meetings along with supporting documentation including IEPs and BIPs (if applicable). This was a mixed-methods study. It was the role of the researcher to collect qualitative and quantitative data from this documentation for analysis.

Action and Innovation

The district's Special Education Director emailed with the researcher in early November of 2022. An informal agreement was made via email and the researcher requested a signed administrator consent form and applied for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. After receiving the signed consent form and once the study received IRB approval, a Zoom video conference call was held on January 10, 2023. To select the appropriate records for review, the researcher requested MDR documentation, with IEPs and BIPs (if applicable), for students who attended high school within the last 10 years, received language therapy as a related service, and were over the age of 16 at the time of the incident. Federal law requires students who are 16 years of age or older to participate as a member of their IEP team and would therefore be considered as a “relevant IEP team member.” A plan was made that the Special Education Director would look for student cases that would qualify for this request.

The researcher developed protocols for data collection. On February 1, 2023, the researcher went to the administration building of the district to spend time with the physical documentation to complete the research protocols as hard copies. The researcher requested the following documents: Student 1 MDR Document, Student 1 IEP, Student 1 BIP (if applicable), Student 2 MDR Document, Student 2 IEP, Student 2 BIP (if applicable). IEPs were requested to provide information about the student’s dis/ability, the individuals on the IEP team, the strategies that best support the student’s learning, the services the student receives, and the student’s accommodations and modifications. If the students had one, BIPs were requested to provide information about targeted behaviors and strategies to be used by the school staff. The researcher received the following documents: Student 1 MDR Document A, Student 1 MDR Document B, Student 1 IEP, Student 1 Adult Response Plan (an informal guide to behavior intervention). The researcher did not make copies or take pictures of the documentation and left only with the completed protocols after 1 hour and 50 minutes with the documents.

Problem Statement, Purpose Statement, and Research Questions

The problem that was addressed in this study is that students in elementary and secondary education are being disciplined with exclusionary practices at disproportionate rates to their typically developing peers (U.S. DOE, 2022). Further, the literature review revealed that SLPs are not consistently invited to manifestation determination meetings and expressive and receptive language of the student being disciplined are not consistently considered in the manifestation determination meetings and process (Fisher et al., 2021; Knudsen & Bethune, 2018). Examining the documentation from manifestation determination review meetings and comparing it to federal guidelines, district guidelines, and best practices in the research was done to determine if district guidelines were followed and what factors related to language were considered. This study was designed to provide data to support the research into best practices for MDR policy for educational researchers and educators working in the field.

The researcher posed the following questions:

1) If I review 2 manifestation determination meeting documents using an evaluative tool based on district standards, in what ways, if any, will I find evidence that expressive and receptive language of the student were considered?

2) If I review 2 manifestation determination meeting documents using an evaluative tool based on district standards, in what ways, if any, will I see how district guidelines were followed during the meeting?

Screen Shot 2023-04-11 at 8.47.43 AM.png

Instruments and Data Collection Procedures

The protocol was designed by the researcher in accordance with federal law and district policies. The purpose of the district MDR documentation was to have a record of the MDR meeting and answer the two questions posed by IDEA: Was the conduct in question caused by, or did it have a direct and substantial relationship, to the child’s disability? And was the conduct the direct result of the LEA’s failure to implement the IEP? The researcher printed the protocol with large open spaces behind each question or prompt to allow for handwritten transcriptions and notes.

Results

Qualitatitive Data

Poster Presentation

Findings and Conclusion

Study Findings

The researcher posed the following research questions:

To answer whether the expressive and receptive language of the student were considered, the SLP coded two sections of the MDR documentation to collect qualitative data. Looking at the description of the incident and the justification for the MDR decisions, the researcher identified some evidence the student’s expressive language abilities were considered. In both MDR events, the description of the incident included information about the student’s expressive language. There is no evidence of consideration of receptive language skills. Similarly, the MDR documentation for both events included the student’s diagnoses and a brief explanation as to how the student may differ from typically developing peers. The student’s social communication is mentioned briefly. There is no further information about the student’s ability to express themselves verbally or comprehend receptively during times of distress.

The researcher did gather additional information from the IEP and the BIP to provide greater context. The student’s assessment scores from CELF-5 (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 5th Edition) reflected a difference between his receptive and expressive language abilities. The student scored in the average range for the Receptive Language Index (SS= 96). The Expressive Language Index score was in the very low/severe range (SS=61). These factors were not recorded as being considered in the MDR meeting documentation. It’s possible these were considered and were not recorded by team members. The meeting did have an SLP in attendance but there is not sufficient evidence to suggest the SLP explained these scores to the team. The MDR documentation does mention anxiety. As mentioned in an earlier section, there is evidence that a person’s expressive language abilities decrease when their anxiety increases (Gynther, 1957). Those CELF-5 scores were gathered under normal testing conditions based on what was reported in the IEP. One could hypothesize the student would have increased difficulty with expressive and receptive communication during a stressful anxiety inducing event.

It was noted by the researcher that an SLP was the case manager for this student. Upon reviewing the student’s IEP, the researcher identified the strategies that best support the student and the three goals the SLP was working on. It was stated the student required “no sarcasm,” “one question at a time,” and “wait time.” These strategies were not addressed or discussed in the MDR documentation in any section. The speech and language goals in the IEP addressed verbal problem-solving skills, conversational skills, and the production of the voiced and voiceless /th/ sound. If these were identified as areas of concern, it would be logical that they too might be cited in the justification for the MDR decision section. A sentence about how the student has difficulty with verbal problem solving and participating in conversations would have indicated the MDR team considered the student’s expressive and receptive language in greater detail.

In response to the second question, the researcher found some evidence that indicated district guidelines were not followed during the MDR meetings. In both meetings, the individuals listed as having made the MDR decision did not include a parent. In the first meeting, there was no LEA representative. Also, in the justification for the MDR decision in the second meeting, there is no explanation as to how they answered the question of whether there was a failure to implement the IEP. Again, other reasons could have been discussed during the MDR meeting but the documentation suggests they considered this question but did not give a reason for their response. In the first meeting, the team responded “yes” to indicate the incident was a manifestation of the student’s dis/ability. In the documentation, they recorded the next plan of action to hold a RED meeting where they chose to collect more data in the area of adaptive behaviors by conducting an FBA. These are the next steps outlined in the federal law and this step leads to the development of a new BIP. The goal is to understand the function of the behaviors and make a plan to keep the student safe and prevent incidents of behavior from happening in the future. This action did follow district guidelines and it involved the many stakeholders for this student as team members.

Conclusion

This pilot study with an action research design was successful in that it validated the protocol created. One cannot take the results of this study and generalize this information, as the sample size was too small to draw major conclusions. However, the researcher identified areas of strengths in the current design and areas that need to be changed. The importance of analyzing the exclusionary discipline of students with dis/abilities cannot be understated. This research will contribute to the wider field of research in social justice for youth offenders with DLD.

References