Ohio's Special Education Determination

Every year, each state receives a rating on its implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), known as its determination. The U.S. Department of Education uses both procedural compliance and student results data, giving each equal weight, to evaluate each state’s performance. These data result in one of four determinations — Meets Requirements, Needs Assistance, Needs Intervention, or Needs Substantial Intervention.

Ohio is one of seven states and territories receiving a 2024 determination of Needs Assistance. See the Determination Enclosures section of Ohio's 2022-2023 Annual Performance Report for the determination details.

After one year in Meets Requirements, two of Ohio’s areas of improvement continue to be the percentage of students with disabilities who graduate by meeting the same requirements as students without disabilities and the percentage of students with disabilities dropping out. Despite an improvement from 67 to 69 percent of students with disabilities who graduated with a regular high school diploma in 2022, Ohio is ranked 43 of 61 states and territories. Ohio’s 19 percent dropout rate for students with disabilities in 2022 ranked 36 of 61 states and territories.

Ohio continues to address its lowest scoring areas of graduation and dropout.  

Improvement Efforts

In partnership with stakeholders, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (the Department) and the Office of Exceptional Children (OEC) is implementing a number of initiatives to improve graduation rates and decrease dropout rates for Ohio’s students with disabilities:

  1. In March 2021, the OEC released Each Child Means Each Child: Ohio’s Plan to Improve Learning Experiences and Outcomes for Students with Disabilities. This plan includes a focus on improved postsecondary transition and outcomes.

  2. OEC’s State Systemic Improvement Plan focuses on the use of an early warning system and student-specific strategies to improve attendance, behavior, and course performance, all leading toward improved graduation rates and decreased dropout rates for students with disabilities. The Department received a Statewide Longitudinal Data System grant to develop an Early Warning System and a Progress Toward Graduation reporting system within the Ohio District Data Exchange.

  3. With support from the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition Collaborative, the OEC is leading a state cross-agency initiative entitled Establishing Families as Partners in the Secondary Transition Planning Process. The short-term outcome is to increase the capacity of agency personnel to understand, at a minimum, the following critical topics through the lens of secondary transition:
    -- the value of family partnerships
    -- culturally and linguistically diverse families
    -- implicity bias and the evolution of disability
    -- having authentic and necessary conversations
    -- universal design, which includes creating and redesigning communication and experiences to better represent and serve families

    The professional learning series is targeted to a group of local cross-agency professionals from local schools, career-technical centers and education service centers, county boards of developmental disabilities, mental health providers, counselors, and supervisors from Opportunities from Ohioans with Disabilities, and anyone providing service and support to transition-age youth with disabilities. 

  4. The Department and Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities have developed an interagency agreement to increase access to vocational rehabilitation services starting at age 14. The initiative is called the Ohio Transition Support Partnership.

  5. The OEC has contracted with the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence to develop an Age-Appropriate Transition Assessment Tool as a resource for individualized education program teams to develop appropriate postsecondary goals and transition services for students with disabilities.

  6. Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement supports educators with the improvement of language and literacy instruction for all students through five interrelated components – teacher capacity, shared leadership, multi-tiered systems of support, parent partnership, and community collaboration. The literacy team, in collaboration with the OEC developed a dyslexia support guide, resources for science of reading which benefit all students including students who have an IEP, as well as building a statewide system to support literacy in adolescents. This includes having regional adolescent literacy specialists who provide professional learning and coaching to build capacity of instructional practices in the delivery of literacy instruction targeted to the adolescent age group. 

  7. The OEC is contributing to support the development of Ohio’s math initiative and will develop specific targeted supports for instructional practices that support all students, including evidence-based practices for students with an IEP goal specific to mathematics.  

  8. In June 2021, the OEC released the 11 District Plan in response to the Doe Settlement. Though the plan outlines increased supports from the Department for students with disabilities in 11 targeted districts, the resources and other supports developed will be available statewide. Activities include, but are not limited to, school and family training on graduation requirements and development of a Graduation Decision Framework. 

  9. Ohio has provided the LRP publication and Special Education Connection for smaller rural districts and community schools which have fewer than 2,000 students. Typically, smaller schools have staff who serve in multiple capacities and special education oversight is one of the areas of coverage. This effort is to provide access to special education basics, information and resources, and tools. The busy educational leader who is covering multiple administrative functions needs to access information in one place quickly and this serves that purpose. We have provided access to more than two thirds of LEAs with fewer than 2,000 students, which equates to almost 4,000 users. The Department plans to include the remaining 200 LEAs with fewer than 2,000 students. This could potentially reach another 4,000 educators across Ohio, thus supporting more with easy access to common information, resources, and tools. 

Supportive State Legislation

  1. Ohio’s graduation requirements for the class of 2023 offer multiple pathways to graduation. Ohio’s newly adopted graduation requirements provide greater flexibility and acknowledge that students can demonstrate competency and readiness through a variety of mechanisms.

  2. Ohio law requires all students in grades 9-12 to have graduation plans in place.

  3. Per Ohio Law, districts must have a policy in place to identify students who are at-risk for not meeting graduation requirements and to develop intervention plans.

  4. Per House Bill 410, each school district must have a chronic absenteeism policy.

Resources

District Special Education Ratings

After receiving Ohio’s annual determination, the Department makes determinations of each district’s special education program, known in Ohio as the Special Education Ratings.  

 

Last Modified: 10/2/2024 7:31:30 AM