Legislators look
for ways to watch
special education

They say that current monitoring
methods have shortcomings

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By Crystal Kua
ckua@starbulletin.com

State lawmakers are exploring legislative avenues to continue to collect information on and track the progress and performance of the state's special education system, especially when federal oversight comes to an end.

State Senate Education Chairman Norman Sakamoto said the information will help determine "how we as the state of Hawaii are going to monitor and see how we're doing in serving all of our students."

The state is currently under a federal consent decree to improve special education services.

Sakamoto (D, Moanalua), and House Education chairman Rep. Ken Ito (D, Kaneohe) both head a joint legislative task force on the consent decree. They heard from representatives of the state Education and Health departments yesterday on what they are doing now to gather information to keep tabs on student and the system's performance.

But there are shortcomings in the current methods, they said.

For example, the integrated special education computerized information known as ISPED, which was mandated by the federal court, is narrowly focused on students covered by the consent decree, doesn't house data on all students and doesn't have all the information that Department of Education officials need.

Sakamoto said having the necessary information also could help the state keep costs down while assisting a student as early as possible.

"We have to get there and obviously resources are a concern, but we don't want to have our kids be special needs before they can get extra help. We want every kid to get the help they need."

Richard Hess, who oversees school-based behavioral health for the department, told Sakamoto that the key to monitoring will be gathering the right information.

"If we have those separate data that should give us a very good idea of how our system is performing."