The USBE's monitoring process (UPIPS) has placed an emphasis on parent engagement through parent and student focus groups and focused parent engagement questions in interviews with various educators, administrators, and related service providers. LEAs are provided verbal and written feedback and recommendations for improving parent involvement as part of the monitoring process. The USBE is working on creating system coherence regarding parent involvement by building this priority area into the program improvement plan (PIP) process. Each LEA is required to develop a PIP on an annual basis. The LEA must conduct a data analysis and root cause analysis around parent involvement to identify areas of strength and areas of need. LEAs are required to develop goals for parent involvement in their plan if they were identified as having high risk for Indicator 8. As the PIP is reviewed and revised each year, the LEA must also report progress on previ ous year's goals. Describe the analysis of the response rate including any nonresponse bias that was identified, and the steps taken to reduce any identified bias and promote response from a broad cross section of parents of children with disabilities. Utah used statistical significance testing to determine if one demographic group was over- or under-represented based on their response rate. Although significant differences were found in response rates by race/ethnicity and disability, the actual responses of these different groups of parents showed no significant differences in the overall parent involvement percentage. Utah also compared the responses of parents who responded early in the process to those who responded later in the process. The idea being that perhaps those who do not immediately respond are different in some meaningful way than those who respond immediately. These results showed no difference between parents who responded earlier and parents who responded later. Based on our analysis, we conclude that nonresponse bias is not present.

Include in the State's analysis the extent to which the demographics of the children for whomparents responded are represent ative of the demographics of children receiving special education services. States should consider categories such as race/ethnicity, age of student, disability category, and geographic location in the State. Utah used statistical significance testing of response rated to determine if one demographic group was over-or under-represented. Note that our survey sample was such that if all disaggregated groups have the same response rate, then, the disaggregated groups are representative of the population. For example, if all racial/ethnic groups had a 30% response rate, the population of the respondents would mirror the actual population in terms of its racial/ethnic make-up. On the other hand, if one racial/ethnic group had a 30% response rate and another had a 20% response rate, the population of the respondents would not mirror the actual population in terms of its racial/ethnic make-up. Significant differences were found in response rates by disability and race/ethnicity. In terms of race/ethnicity, parents of White students were more likely to respond (response rate=35.21%) than parents of American Indian students (response rate=21.69%) and Hispanic students (response rate=20.94%). In terms of disability, parents of students with Autism (response rate=38.96%) and parents of students with Other Health Impairments (response rate=37.23%) were more likely to respond than parents of students with a Specific Learning Disability (response rate=28.10%). No significant differences were found by the grade of the student. Although there are a few significant differences in response rates between groups of parents by race/ethnicity and disability, there were no significant differences in the parent involvement percentage between the different groups of parents. For example, parents of White students had a similar parent involvement percentage as parents of Hispanic students and parents of American Indian students. So, we are confident that the overall results are representative of the State despite the differences in response rates. In addition, parents from a wide range of LEAs across the state responded to the survey. Thus, the results are representative of all racial/ethnic groups and all disability categories. Furthermore, results are weighted by LEA to ensure the parent survey results reflect the population of parents in terms of geographic distribution.

########## The demographics of the parents responding are representative of the demographics of children receiving special education services. (yes/no)

NO

########## If no, describe the strategies that the State will use to ensure that in the future the response data are representative of those demographics.

The strategies USBE will use to ensure future response data are representative of the demographics of the students receiving special education services and are described above in the "Describe strategies that will be implemented which are expected to increase the response rate year over year, particularly for those groups that are underrepresented" field.

########## Describe the metric used to determine representativeness (e.g., +/- 3% discrepancy in the proportion of responders compared to target group).

Statistical significance testing of response rate was used to determine representativeness with a threshold of p<0.05.

Sampling Question Question	Yes / No
Was sampling used?	YES
If yes, has your previously approved sampling plan changed?	NO

########## Describe the sampling methodology outlining how the design will yield valid and reliable estimates.

All LEAs are divided into two rotating cohorts for receiving the parent survey on a biennial basis. The four largest LEAs in the state are included in both cohorts and receive the survey every year. LEAs were stratified by student enrollment, geographical region of the state, race/ethnicity demographics, and socioeconomic level. LEAs across the stratified categories were then randomly assigned to one of the two cohorts. Each of the two cohorts includes large, medium, and small LEAs. For each LEA, a stratified, representative group of parents is selected to receive the parent survey. The number of parents chosen is dependent on t he number of students with disabilities in the LEA. The sample sizes selected ensure roughly similar margins of error across the different LEA sizes. For those LEAs that have more than 100 students, a sample of parents was chosen to receive the survey. The population was stratified by grade, race/ethnicity, primary disability, and gender to ensure representativeness of the resulting sample. When calculating state-level results, responses were weighted by the student population size (e.g., an LEA that had four times as many students with disabilities as another LEA received four times the weight in computing overall state results). The number of respondents who reported the school facilitated parent involvement and the total number of respondents are not whole numbers because weighting data often results in fractional weights.