WI State Performance Plan (SPP), Indicator #8: Parent Involvement

Indicator 8: Percent of parents with a child receiving special education services who report that schools facilitated parent involvement as a means of improving services and results for children with disabilities. For more detailed information regarding this indicator, please review Indicator #8 of the State Performance Plan.

Directions for Data Collection, February through June, 2009

Your LEA received an e-mail in February 2009 from the Department if you are among the LEAs that are required to conduct the Parent Involvement survey for Indicator 8 this year. The e-mail instructs you to enter the Special Education Portal using the director of special education’s LPP password and locate the Indicator 8 Excel file. The file contains a random sample of student names and codes that are necessary to complete a mailing to parents of students with disabilities, requesting their participation in the survey. If you have questions about the e-mail, the file, or your participation in the process, please see Frequently Asked Questions.

This page contains

• Electronic form letters in English, Spanish and Hmong that are formatted to merge with the downloaded Excel file.
• Customized “eye-catching” letter in English

Generating a Mailing to Parents

1. Download the Indicator 8 Excel file from the Special Education Web Portal. The Excel file contains part of the data needed to merge with the electronic form letter to parents:
   • List of student names in the random sample that you will use
   • Username for parents to enter on the survey
   • Passwords for parents to enter on the survey
   • Name of director of special education/pupil services
2. Fill in the remainder of the Excel file spreadsheet with
   • the date of the mailing
   • a parent name and address for each student listed
   • the telephone numbers that you wish to provide parents for assistance
   • the title of the person who will sign the letter (you may change the name if you wish).
3. If any families of students on the list have a native language other than English, cut and paste those rows into separate Spanish and Hmong Excel spreadsheets. Other languages must be dealt with individually.
4. 4. Merge the English letter with the spreadsheet of English-speaking families. For directions on how to mail merge, open the Microsoft Word Help on the main menu bar and type in "mail merge". Edit the recipient list by ensuring that only the rows that contain a student name are checked. Print the letters on your school letterhead. It is possible to have more than one survey completed by a family if they have more than one child in the selected sample. Please note: Included above is a customized "eye-catching" letter that also includes a date on which district or CESA staff will contact the parent by telephone. This method was more successful at bringing in returns than the standard letter. You may wish to use this approach to maximize initial returns.
5. Repeat the process for any Spanish or Hmong letters.
6. Send the mailing on or near February 27, 2009.

Important Information About Sending Paper Surveys

1. If a parent requests a paper survey or the LEA chooses to send paper surveys, you must determine if the child identified in the sample was at least six years of age or older on September 1, 2008.
   • If yes, send them the Age 6-21 Parent Survey. See Technical Assistance Resources below.
   • If no, send them the Age 3-5 Parent Survey. See Technical Assistance Resources below.
2. Important: Fill in the Username box with the Username code and the Password box with the password code from the spreadsheet. LEAs that did not fill in this information before sending surveys lost significant amounts of data in past years because responses could not be linked back to the correct LEA.
3. Record that you sent that parent a paper survey. This is an added safeguard against losing data.
4. Include a return envelope addressed to:
   
   North Central Regional Resource Center
   5 Pattee Hall
   150 Pillsbury Dr. SE
   Minneapolis, MN 55455

Please do not have paper surveys returned to your school district as that will violate the confidentiality that has been ensured to parents.

Requests for Telephone or In-Person Assistance

If school staff or parent liaisons will assist a parent by reading or explaining the survey questions, please use the simplified script that you will find under Technical Assistance Resources. This was created to promote uniformity among LEAs and parent organization staff who assist parents. It is permissible to have parents come in as a group for assistance in hearing the survey items, but discussion of responses should be discouraged. To complete a survey online for a parent, please enter the survey at http://dpi.wi.gov/sped/parentsurvey.html.

Technical Assistance Resources

All items below have been updated as of January 23, 2009.

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Timeline
• Article to include in your parent newsletter
• WI Special Education Parent Survey--Paper
  

  English:	Age 3-5	Age 6-21
  Spanish:	Age 3-5	Age 6-21
  Hmong:	Age 3-5	Age 6-21

• Scripts: Age 3-5   Age 6-21
• Resources for Survey Assistance

For questions about this information, contact Patricia A. Bober (608) 266-5194

Last updated on 2/9/2009 1:38:19 PM