2022-06-09-LHRC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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/partially meets expectations. Special education students are also at roughly 50% does not-/partially meets expectations in ELA. These numbers include 8th graders and leads one to question how these cohorts of students can keep up with other academic courses in school when reading is a fundamental skillset for many classes. The Dyslexia Parents Group wants to support early identification and evidenced based intervention for students by requesting that LPS publish a decision tree used district-wide by all teachers which will bring a standardized criteria and referral system to the Response to Intervention (RTI) model used when referring struggling readers to reading intervention. Standardizing this process will reduce any potential bias in the reading assessment and RTI process. Making this available to parents will help them better understand the school's reading assessment process and decision criteria for reading intervention referrals and support for struggling readers. [end presentation] • Questions A committee member asked for clarification on the MCAS data. Ms. Locher confirmed that 75% of African American students did not meet expectations. The data comes from MA -DESE and is public information. Another committee member pointed out their concern over students not meeting literacy expectations and its impact on their ability to keep up with other subjects. Ms. Locher pointed out that the MCAS literacy number does not directly correspond to language-based learning disabilities, but that it is an indication that the student may not be lacking in solid reading skills. TG thanked Ms. Locher for raising the equity concerns around reading skill attainment. She also reminded the committee that the scope in interest on early literacy is limited concerns around equity for the purposes of the LHRC and the committee does not wish to intrude on the school committee's role and responsibility for oversight of education in LPS. • Member updates - [CB] - 2 instances of racist graffiti reported in the past month, one at LHS and one on the bike path. The graffiti has been removed. There were no witnesses or camera footage available. • [CL] - shared that she attended the LexPride Asian American Voices event. She did hear feedback from one attendee who was concerned that event organizers had not reminded the audience that panelists were sharing individual experiences and perspectives, and these should not be taken as representative of group identity. One story of concern was an individual panelist personal experience with their family that was homophobic, the story was shared in such a way that the audience may have generalized homophobia to be representative of an entire cultural group. TG added that speaking as a white woman, no one assumes she speaks for all white women whereas often, people of the global