Threatened for the last decade with bad publicity and sanctions following poor test results, school districts have been known to grab at loopholes in state testing policy and rip them wide open.
Critics say that's happening again with a new test for special education students called the California Modified Assessment.
Introduced in 2007, the CMA is a simpler version of the state's regular STAR student achievement test. It's tailored to special education students in grades three through 11 whom teachers and parents deem to have no chance at passing the regular test.
The federal government issued guidelines to the state saying the new test should be given to no more than 2 percent of students in those grades – about 100,000 children.
Four years later, almost 200,000 students are taking the test – a number that will likely grow as the CMA gains momentum.
The trend has consequences beyond special education.
CMA scores are tallied separately from scores on the regular test, the STAR California Standards Test. By removing failing students from the pool of kids taking the regular test, districts end up with a greater proportion of high-scoring students.
The CMA has inflated gains on the regular STAR test by about 25 percent statewide since 2007, according to a Bee analysis.
"It's the old business of if you want your test scores to go up, don't test the lower-scoring students," said Doug McRae, a retired testing consultant and Monterey resident who helped the state design the STAR test.
McRae has gone public with his objections to the CMA, recently telling the State Board of Education – his former employer – that districts are abusing it. He said the CMA has some value but many students should instead take the regular STAR test.
"This is an easier test," he said of the CMA. "If we don't push these kids as far as they can be pushed, they might not be functional in society."
Many special education advocates and school leaders disagree, saying the CMA gives students who fail the regular test a chance to do better.
The new test also lets schools better measure student progress, they say. Arbitrarily capping the number of students who can take the test demoralizes teachers and their students.
"At the end of the day, I think (special education students) feel a bit more successful with this," said Kristin Wright, who has a special needs child and chairs the state board's special education advisory committee. "It's like a sigh of relief for the kids that it is not overwhelming."
To qualify as a special education student in California, a student must be identified as having a physical disability such as deafness or autism, a learning disability such as dyslexia, or a serious emotional or behavioral problem. The number of special education students statewide has held steady for several years.
Generally, only special education students who performed at the "below basic" or "far below basic" proficiency levels on the previous year's regular STAR test are eligible to take the CMA. It covers the same concepts as the regular test. But it's different: Reading blurbs are shorter; fewer options are given on multiple-choice questions; pictures are used more often.
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