Those of us who predicted that the NCLB Act regulations affecting special education students would be the first to change were correct - but some South Carolina educators say the changes aren't enough:
A change announced Tuesday in the federal No Child Left Behind education accountability law recognizes that severely disabled children cannot meet the same academic standards as their nondisabled peers. But local educators complain the U.S. Education Department did not go far enough in revising the law's unrealistic requirements...
The rule change announced by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige affects students with the most "significant cognitive disabilities" who don't take the same standardized test as others their age. It allows up to 1 percent of a district's total number of students to test off grade level and still count toward meeting academic progress goals.
That means, for example, that a severely disabled eighth-grader whose mind functions like a third-grader, and therefore learns third-grade standards at school, can take the third-grade Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, and the score will still count...
The new rule is designed to give districts greater flexibility in meeting progress goals for disabled students.
South Carolina has about 110,200 special education students, more than 16 percent of the total student population. Disabilities range from speech impairments to autism.
Kathleen Magliacane, Berkeley County's director of special education programs, said she hopes the state pushes for a 2 percent to 3 percent limit.
Interestingly, at least one state official is willing to be quoted as saying that some kids in SC's special education programs don't need to be there:
But state education officials fear some students in special education programs don't need to be there. Before No Child Left Behind, schools did not need to count the scores of disabled children at all. In an effort to increase test scores, officials may have mislabeled some children.
"We do have concerns about over-identification," said Susan DuRant, the state Education Department's director of exceptional children. "We don't want to use the fact that we have high numbers of special education students as an excuse for changing the rules."
Posted by kswygert at December 10, 2003 04:43 PM