An informative and balanced article about the trials of testing disabled students, from the Chicago Tribune:
There is no love lost between many teachers and the push for more standardized tests. But rarely has a required assessment attracted such ire from educators, who say the IAA is too subjective to be an accurate measure of students' ability, takes up valuable teaching time and does nothing to improve student instruction.
Although scores on the test jumped significantly last year in all subjects except 8th-grade math, critics say the increase shows only that teachers are becoming more nimble at assembling the complicated portfolios...
Everyone agrees that all children should be tested so none is overlooked. But unearthing what goes on in the minds of severely disabled students is no easy task, and proving progress to the government with a uniform reporting system is even more difficult...
Parents and other advocates for the disabled argue that even imperfect test systems push teachers to demand more progress from their special needs students. They cite statistics from New York and Massachusetts that show the drive for accountability has dramatically increased the number of special education students who take and pass the states' regular high school graduation exams.
"Expectations are a powerful thing. These children are surprising us with how much they can learn," said Rachel Quenemoen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, the federally funded technical assistance center on alternate assessments...
Although doomsayers had feared that including special education students in the mix would drastically drive up the number of "failing" schools, that didn't happen in Illinois last year. Just 101 of the state's some 4,000 schools did not meet standards solely because of their special education students.
Posted by kswygert at April 1, 2004 01:31 PM