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Results Driven Accountability

Reading Drives Achievement: Success through Literacy

Results Driven Accountability (RDA) is the revised accountability system from the federal Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). States are allowed to choose a focus for RDA; Wisconsin has chosen literacy outcomes because this is an area of challenge for many students with disabilities in the state. Thus, Wisconsin’s effort retools the acronym as “Reading Drives Achievement: Success through Literacy (RDA:StL).” The revised accountability system, which used to focus solely on compliance, now includes both compliance and results.

Determinations

In making state determinations, OSEP now uses compliance and results data, giving equal weight to each. OSEP’s accountability framework (RDA) brings into focus the educational results and functional outcomes for children with disabilities while balancing those results with the compliance requirements of IDEA.

IDEA details four categories of determination:

  • Meets the requirements and purposes of the IDEA
  • Needs assistance in implementing the requirements of the IDEA
  • Needs intervention in implementing the requirements of the IDEA
  • Needs substantial intervention in implementing the requirements of the IDEA

For more information visit DPI's Determination of Compliance with IDEA Requirements web page.

For a copy of a district's most recent LEA determination, please click the green "Contact Special Education" button at the bottom of this page. You will be redirected to a form, with an option to request the LEA determination.  

Annual Performance Report (APR)/ State Performance Plan (SPP) and State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP)

By February 1 of each year, the State is required to submit an Annual Performance Report (APR) which measures and reports on the State's progress in meeting the targets and goals specified in the Wisconsin State Performance Plan (SPP) to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The APR now includes the State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP), which articulates the state’s RDA plans for each phase.

The SPP represents the Department of Public Instruction's (DPI) plan for improving outcomes of children with disabilities in Wisconsin.

The United States Department of Education, OSEP monitors the DPI using quantifiable indicators in each of three priority areas:

  1. Provision of a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.
  2. State exercise of general supervisory authority, including child find, effective monitoring, the use of resolution sessions, mediation, voluntary binding arbitration, and a system of transition services.
  3. Disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic groups in special education and related services, to the extent the representation is the result of inappropriate identification.