For Immediate Release: February 2008

For the fourth consecutive year, Optimal will be providing consulting services relating to the issue of the disproportionate representation of minority students, particularly African American students, in special education to the Maryland State Department of Education.

The main activities of the contract include data analysis of the special education or Child Count Data collected in October of each school year, analysis of the suspension data collected at the end of each school year, technical assistance to the state and local school systems regarding calculations of disproportionality, and the drafting of the disproportionality and suspension sections of the State’s Annual Performance Report (APR) to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The data analysis includes calculations of the 0.2 Index, Risk Ratios and comparative ratios, which are methods used to determine the level of disproportionality per school system and per each identification, placement, and suspension category.

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Optimal Solutions Group, LLC is a nonpartisan, public policy research consulting firm in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Optimal is committed to supplying insightful program evaluation, cost-benefit and effectiveness analyses, custom econometric modeling, and market analyses for decision makers in both the public and private sectors.

Optimal serves numerous government and commercial clients, including federal and state agencies, community-based organizations, business associations, and law firms. 

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Mark Turner at 301.918.7301, mturner@optimalsolutionsgroup.com. 
Tracye Turner at 301.918.7302, tturner@optimalsolutionsgroup.com.