Self-described "Long-time reader, first time contributor" Rafel - make that Devoted Reader Rafel - sent along this CNN story about the impact of special education students on standardized test results. He's not impressed by the schools that claim that the special education testing requirement of NCLB drags them down and puts too much of a burden on teachers. Let's see what the article has to say:
Special education has been a battleground for years. Parents of special ed students fought long and hard for their children to be included in mainstream classrooms, and for the money to provide them with extra help. Now the new law, dubbed No Child Left Behind, has focused even more attention on special education, because of the consequences for entire schools.
The law mandates that schools bring all groups of students up to grade level on standardized reading and math tests, including special ed students and those who do not speak English. If even one of those groups fails to meet progress targets for two years in a row, an entire school can be listed as failing and face an escalating list of sanctions...
Stop and think. Why would such stringent testing requirements be put into practice in the first place (even though all evidence suggests that some of these requirements will soon be relaxed)? It's because schools have long been able to use "special education" as a dumping ground for kids who aren't really of low ability, but who don't respond well to boring or ineffective teachers. I think one can argue that the percentage of special education students in a school and the quality of instruction that those students receive is one measure of how good a school is. There's a reason it's not called the "No Child Except "Special" Ones Left Behind" Act.
However, the Education Department does not want to let all special education students and their teachers off the hook, said Ronald Tomalis, acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education...
"There have been low expectations for some of these children all along," he said. "And that's not because of mental abilities, but because of poor instruction received in the early grades. We need to challenge schools that these children can achieve. Sure, they will need an intensive program, but they can be brought up to grade level."
For more seriously disabled children, he said, a proposed change to the law would let 1 percent of all children in a district skip the grade-level exams and instead take a test tailored to their abilities. If they scored well on that alternative, it could be counted in their school's favor.
One teacher describes her sixth- and seventh-grade class in the following way:
In Harper's classroom, she interrupts her math lessons constantly to ask her sixth- and seventh-graders not to kneel on the floor, to tell them that no, it is not time to go home yet, and to listen patiently to stories that do not involve math.
It can take about 15 minutes to wade through four or five math problems, because her 12- and-13-year-olds are struggling to master fractions, not the pre-algebra that occupies most seventh- and eighth-graders at the middle school.
Harper said she measures her students' progress not by their performance on standardized tests but by how they are doing on plans tailored to each youngster. For many of them, the realistic goal is not to work at grade level but to gain as much self-sufficiency as possible, she said.
No offense, but why are these kids in sixth and seventh grade in the first place? How did they get promoted to that point when they seem to be functioning as third-graders? It seems to me - and I'll admit that I don't know that much about the politics of special eduation - that at some point, everyone decided that special education kids should be "mainstreamed" into classes. Now the chickens have come home to roost, and it seems that special education teachers want to be able to say, "Oh, these kids deserve to be sixth-graders, but they can't be expected to do sixth-grade work." What's the definition of a sixth-grader, then?
I'm not saying I have a solution - I've never claimed to have one, in this area. But it's quite obvious that many folks in the current educational setting simply want the definition of what it means to function at a grade level to be stretched so far and wide that it's essentially meaningless. The current practice of standardized testing narrows the definition significantly, resulting in this battle that is most definitely just getting started.
Posted by kswygert at December 2, 2003 09:33 PM