Children with Disabilities Under No Child Left Behind
(NCLB)
Myths and Realities
March 24, 2004 (updated May 2005)
What do we really mean by “No child left behind”?
The
purpose of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is “… to ensure that all
children have a fair, equal and significant opportunity to obtain a
high-quality education… (emphasis added).
Recently,
there has been discussion in the media about expanding the number of students
with disabilities who may be excluded from the accountability system created by NCLB. There is also a great deal of confusion and
misinformation about what this law already requires with regard to students
with disabilities. The “Myths and
Realities” below attempt to address some of these misconceptions.
Myth #1
It is unfair to require children with disabilities to
take those tests. It will endanger their
already fragile self -esteem and increase the likelihood that they will drop
out of school.
Reality
Most children with disabilities
are able to keep up with their peers academically and take standardized
assessments (tests) successfully -- some with and some without
accommodations/modifications (changes to the test that take the student’s
disability into account).
Congress included students with disabilities in the
accountability system of NCLB on purpose – because they are one of the groups
of school children in need of attention.
As with all students, students
with disabilities each have unique strengths and needs. It is impossible (and
offensive) to generalize about how “they” will fare on any particular
assessment.
Many students with
disabilities do not qualify for special education because they do not need it. Of those who do qualify, the vast majority do not have disabilities that would prevent them from
keeping up with their peers academically. This means they should be able to
participate meaningfully in the regular standardized tests. Some students may require approved
modifications or accommodations in order to take the regular test. However,
once these accommodations are provided, the students perform just like other
students in their class. For example, a blind student might need a version of
the test in Braille, but once the Braille version is provided, the student can
participate at the same level as his classmates.
In the most recent data
(school year 2000-2001) published by the U.S. Department of Education, even a
very conservative count shows that a far greater percentage of school aged
(ages 6-21) children in special education have a primary disability that is not
related to their cognitive or intellectual ability than those who do.
There are 13 eligibility
categories within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) -- the
federal law that creates the special education program. Nine of these
categories by definition do not include cognitive or intellectual impairments
(speech or language impairments, emotional disturbance, specific learning
disabilities, hearing impairments, orthopedic impairments, other health
impairments, visual impairments, deaf blindness, autism).
In school year
2000-2001, the categories of students that did not include cognitive
impairments totaled 86.5% of children eligible for special education
under IDEA. The categories that could include cognitive impairments totaled 13.4%.
In addition, a great many students within the other four
categories (multiple disabilities, mental retardation, traumatic brain
injury, and developmental delay) are also
able to function at grade level on the tests with or without approved
modifications or accommodations.
Removing more students
with disabilities from the accountability system will defeat its purpose. It is discrimination,
pure and simple, to assume that students with disabilities should be
“protected” from the tests that all students take, from the level of
accountability we expect from public schools with regard to all students, and
from the high expectations we have for all students. If students with
disabilities are excluded from the accountability system, they will become
completely invisible, forgotten in the rush to meet the needs of students whose
scores count.
Myth #2
It is unfair to require school districts, which
otherwise do well on state tests, to be found “in need of improvement” when it
is only the scores of children with disabilities that are holding them
back. The law needs to have exceptions
written into it to prevent that from happening.
Reality
There are already a
number of exceptions in the law allowing school districts to remove the scores
of children with disabilities from the accountability system. Additional
exceptions are not needed and would be harmful to students with disabilities.
All
districts have students with disabilities enrolled in their schools -- there is
nothing unique about this. One example
often given as a reason for expanding the exceptions within NCLB is that of a
school district with a facility like the Mayo Clinic within its borders, where
families of children with disabilities may settle in greater numbers in order
to be closer to treatment facilities. Such cases are rare and there already is
an exception to protect districts in such cases.
Some
of the exceptions that already allow districts to exclude the scores of
students with disabilities or to use those scores to the district’s advantage
are:
·
If
a school or district has a smaller number of students with disabilities, the
scores of those students may be excluded if the number of students is too small
to yield “statistically verifiable information” or the results would reveal
“personally identifiable information” about an individual student.
“Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) is the
benchmark used to determine whether or not a school or district is in need of
improvement, as defined by NCLB. (It is
from this calculation that schools and districts would like to have a greater
number of scores of students with disabilities excluded.) The number of
students who may be excluded from the district’s AYP calculation because of
small sample size is set by the state, and varies greatly from state to
state. In
·
Even
if the group of students with disabilities within a school or district is not
scoring high enough to be counted toward Adequate Yearly Progress, the school
or district still can make AYP -- as
long as that group of students improves by 10 percent over the prior school
year and makes progress on one other academic indicator, such as graduation
rate.
·
Schools
and districts must test 95 percent of their children with disabilities, which
means that the scores of up to five percent of the students with disabilities
already may have been excluded from the AYP calculation. Schools and districts are not permitted an
automatic five percent exemption. This exception was included to provide for students
who were absent on the day of the test -- but
it still factors into the AYP calculation.
·
States
may opt not to test students in schools that do not assign grade levels so
their scores would not be counted.
·
Certain
students with cognitive disabilities may take a test that is based on
achievement standards that are different from those that apply to other
students. (Option 4 as described
below). In NCLB, only scores that meet
the level of “proficient” or “ advanced” may be counted positively toward AYP
(i.e. “help” the district). There is a
cap on the number of “proficient” and “advanced” scores from the Option 4
students that may be counted toward AYP, but that cap is pretty high-- 1% of
the total number of students taking the test in that grade. Although this exception does not involve a
large number of students, the scores of students with disabilities may actually
be a benefit for a district – improving, not reducing its chances to make
AYP.
In addition, as mentioned in the Mayo Clinic
example above, in cases where a district has a high incidence of students who
meet the criteria for Option 4, the district may request a waiver from the
state to allow it to count the proficient and advanced scores of even more of
the students who take the Option 4 test.
·
The
state may allow a school or district to average its data over three years,
enabling it to hide slow or achieve no improvement within groups of students,
such as students with disabilities, for some time.
·
In
April 2005, the Secretary of Education instituted a policy that permits states
to test an additional 2% of students with disabilities using alternative
achievement standards. States must meet
certain requirements before the US Department of Education will permit the
state to use these test scores for AYP purposes. The Department indicates that draft rule
making outlining this policy and permitting public comment will be available
soon.
If,
even with all of these exceptions, a school district is unable to make AYP
because too many students with disabilities don’t achieve the proficient level,
perhaps the district truly is in need of improvement. One
purpose of NCLB is to raise expectations for students with disabilities, and
unfortunately, expectations for this group of students have always been very
low. Congress very specifically tried to raise expectations for students with
disabilities when it made sweeping changes to the IDEA in 1997, and for that
matter, when it passed the law over 25 years ago.
Myth #3
It is unfair to expect children with different types
of disabilities to achieve on a “one size fits all” test.
Reality
It is not a “one size fits all” test. Students with disabilities may take the tests in one of four ways, in a
manner that is selected specifically to meet that individual student’s needs.
In order for a student with a disability to take
the test in any manner different from the way that students without
disabilities are taking it, the student must meet certain legally based
criteria.
Option 1: Take the regular
assessment in the same manner as other
students.
Option 2: Take the regular assessment with approved accommodations or modifications. For example, having a teacher read a
test out loud to a blind student or providing the test in Braille.
Option 3:
Take an alternate assessment that is based on the same achievement standards as the
regular assessment. There is nothing that requires a state to have only one
alternate assessment, and since students have varied and unique needs, it makes
sense to consider having more than one alternate assessment.
Option 4:
Take the alternate assessment based on different achievement standards (e.g. a
life skills rather than academic curriculum).
There is no restriction on the
number of students who meet the criteria for Option 4 who may take the test this way – only the manner in
which their scores are counted at the district level. The
one percent cap was intended to prevent states and districts from including the
scores of students who are capable of using Options 1-3, thus “padding” their AYP with the scores of
students who took a test that was too easy for them.
Myth #4
The Department hasn’t provided us enough time to
create these alternate ways to test students, so we have no accurate way to
measure the progress of children with disabilities.
Reality
The requirement that states offer the option of an
alternate assessment, accommodations or
modifications to the test to students with disabilities is not at all
new.
States have been required to provide alternate
assessments since at least the last time the IDEA was revised in 1997. In fact,
some states like
The difference is that this is the first time that
states, districts, and schools that don’t meet these requirements will be held
accountable. Until now, only the students themselves have been hurt by “one
size fits all” tests that penalize them for problems caused by their
disabilities.
Conclusion:
Since
a large number of students with disabilities would have to fail in order for
this failure to have an impact on the district’s AYP status and since a great
many students with disabilities can succeed on standardized tests, a finding of
“needs improvement” achieves the primary goal of this law – it shines a light
on those groups of students for whom the American dream of a quality public
school education has not always been a reality.
If
we allow this light to dim -- by exempting more students’ scores from AYP --
students with disabilities will recede back into the shadowy backrooms they
inhabited for all those years before laws were passed to protect their civil
rights.
For
more information contact Elizabeth Greczek at Elizabeth.Greczek@ndrn.org