Special Education

https://gabriellagonzales.quarto.pub/special-education-project/

This is a project explores special education in Texas public schools as part of Reporting with Data in R. It is a follow-up to the Houston Chronicle’s series Denied.

It includes all the data files needed to complete the chapters.

Source: TAPR

The data included here comes from the Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR), a tool provided by the Texas Education Agency to find and download a wide range of information on the performance of students in each school and district. New reports are published for each academic year. The data is very detailed with breakdowns by student groups, including ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Included in these reports are the percentage of students in special education, which is what we are after. Our goal is to find how the percentage of education students has changed over time.

Summary

This project analyzes changes in special education enrollment across Texas following the removal of a statewide benchmarking policy. We examined district and county trends over the past decade.

Data-driven news lede

Since Texas dropped its special education benchmarking policy, the number of school districts with enrollment rates above the 8.5% threshold has increased from about 600 districts in 2013 to nearly 1,000 by 2023.

Data takeaways

The percentage of special education students in Austin ISD increased from 10% in 2013 to 13.8% in 2023.
The statewide percentage of special education students has increased from 8.6% in 2013 to 12.9% in 2023.
Before the change, there were about 600 districts above the arbitrary 8.5% benchmark. After the change, the number grew to almost 1,000 districts in 2023.
Local trends in Bastrop, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties show consistent increases in special education percentages.