Over 6000 youngsters in Delaware are attending summer school due to their poor state standardized test scores, but the system isn't working for the relatively large percentage of them who are special education students. According to this article in the News Journal, special ed students are being placed in summer school classes that are far too difficult for them:
Of the 6,452 public school children required under Delaware law to attend summer school this year because they did poorly on state achievement tests, 37 percent are special education students. And unlike the regular school year, when they comprise only 11 percent of enrollment statewide, many of the special education students are in large summer classes without special education teachers and struggling with test material several grade levels higher than the level at which they learn...
State and federal testing laws subject special education youngsters to undue stress, repeated failure, and, in Delaware, summer school classes that don't meet their needs, said parents, teachers and other educators.
Summer school students are re-tested during the semester, and the the special education students, in particular, don't like the tests. One student even drew a picture of himself "his throat slit and blood pouring out" during the exam. Other kids just give up or start to cry.
The problem seems to be that even when kids fail exams that aren't high-stakes, such as the seventh-grade one, they're required to sit in summer classes to get extra help. But the summer classes aren't necessarily tailored to the ones who in seventh-grade special education classes, and so the work, far from being helpful, is too demanding and stressful. Not only do the kids think this unfair, the parents believe it violates their children's individual education plans, or IEPs, that guarantee appropriate instruction.
This article is noteworthy because it doesn't just blame the tests. It also notes that parents of special education students, and other special ed advocates, have been a powerful political force in getting special ed students mainstreamed into regular classrooms, but with special curriculums. The goal of this was to protect the civil rights of such children and to keep them from being left behind in separate educational ghettos. The NCLB Act was also intended to keep special ed kids in the mainstream by insisting that schools use the same exams to test all but the most severely learning-disabled kids.
The inevitable result? Children mainstreamed into seventh-grade classrooms who are given fourth-grade work all year - then sent to summer school classes to work on seventh-grade material because they can't pass seventh-grade exams.
Posted by kswygert at July 16, 2003 05:23 PM