ECISD officials outline results-driven accountability concerns, special education backlogs and steps to correct them

District staff briefed trustees on the state’s Results-Driven Accountability (RDA) framework and the special services department’s work to reduce evaluation backlogs, address disproportionality and improve service delivery.

A presenter described RDA as a separate component within Texas’ A–F accountability system that examines emerging bilinguals, other special populations (foster, homeless and military-connected students) and special education across three domains: academic achievement, postsecondary readiness and disproportionate analysis. The presenter said RDA reports use a 0-to-4 performance scale and that higher numbers (3 and 4) indicate areas requiring intervention. “We are usually used to seeing data in a percentage, but RDA is special in the way it reports its data,” the presenter told the board.

The presenter summarized 2024 determinations for the district: emerging bilinguals (determination level 3), other special populations (level 4, which requires substantial intervention) and special education (level 3). The district said the special-population determination was driven in part by a performance-level 3 on one or more indicators, and that the formula TEA uses can push an overall determination higher even when many indicators are in the 0–1 range.

Martha Brolcheck, executive director of special services, described the special education evaluation backlog and the department’s efforts to reduce it. Brolcheck said the district had a significant carryover of incomplete evaluations when she arrived and that the district invested more than $2 million to increase evaluation capacity. She reported that the district completed more than 1,000 evaluations in 2023–24 and that for 2024–25 there were 656 new referrals, 63 completed and 72 in progress at the time of the meeting.

Brolcheck explained the three compliance timelines for special education: parent consent within 15 days, completion of evaluations within 45 school days, and holding eligibility/IEP meetings within 30 calendar days after evaluation. She said 713 evaluations were currently in compliance and 350 were out of compliance for the year. “Special education is not easy. It is very, very complex,” Brolcheck told trustees.

Significant disproportionality—overrepresentation of racial groups in identification, placement or discipline—was a focus. Brolcheck said the district’s discipline risk ratios for two subgroups had improved but remained near the federal threshold: the two-or-more-races group’s discipline risk ratio improved from 4.0 to 2.6, and African American students’ ratio improved from 3.5 to 2.9; the federal risk threshold is 2.5. The district said it has one to three years to remedy disproportionality and has created a stakeholder committee, allocated federal-set-aside funds, trained principals and is monitoring discipline data in near-real time.

Brolcheck and accountability staff said the district has submitted strategic-support materials to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), is meeting monthly with TEA staff, and has documented several hundred pages of evidence for special education corrective work. They cautioned that improvements in RDA and federal reports are likely to lag by two to three years but said they are tracking live data locally so campuses can adjust discipline and referral practices now.

Trustees asked about identification and declassification (students who may no longer need special education) and about classroom-level MTSS practices. Brolcheck said district leaders are working to shift campus practice toward “learning-focused” interventions within MTSS and to ensure special education remains a services-based program rather than a placement default.

No board action was required; staff said they would continue implementing the strategic support plan, monitoring live analytics, and reporting progress to TEA and the board.