Florida: Cut Schools for Severe Disabilities From Grading System

Florida education officials are taking steps to undo requirements that schools for students with significant cognitive disabilities are rated on the same scale as other public schools.

For the first time, Florida is including the performance of most students in its grading system this year, a concession the state made to have many of the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law waived. Some of the changes meant including the scores of all students with disabilities and nearly all students learning English and grading special education centers where students with the most significant needs attend. The changes took effect at the same time the state's tests in reading, math, writing, and science became more difficult.

The result: School grades across the state dropped, and they could have plummeted further had the state board of education not taken action to keep any school from dropping more than a single letter grade. (That escape hatch disappears next school year.) And at schools that exclusively enroll students with the most severe disabilities, F grades are expected all around.

But in a letter to the editor published Saturday in the Tampa Bay Times, Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson said that he understands the concern about applying the same performance standards to special education centers as other schools, "especially those with students who have significant cognitive disabilities."

Read more of Nirvi Shah's On Special Education article HERE.

Will Congress compound its error on ‘highly qualified’ teachers?

Back in late 2010, Congress approved legislation that defined “highly qualified teachers” as including students still in teacher training programs. Now, instead of admitting that the definition doesn’t make much sense, Congress is on the road to passing new legislation to keep that definition on the books (even though a federal appellate court has ruled that it violates the No Child Left Behind law).

This week, and possibly as early as today, a Senate subcommittee is taking up an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — known in its current form as No Child Left Behind — that deals with this issue.

Under NCLB, all children are supposed to have highly qualified teachers. School districts are supposed to let parents know which teachers are not highly qualified, and they are supposed to be equitably distributed in schools. But they aren’t.

In fact, teachers still in training programs are disproportionately concentrated in schools serving low-income students and students of color, the very children who need the very best the teaching profession has to offer. And the inequitable distribution of these teachers has a disproportionate impact on students with disabilities.

Read more of Valerie Strauss' Washington Post article HERE.

No Child Left Behind Waivers Leave Behind Students With Disabilities

By Nirvi Shah from On Special Education

What concerns the National Center for Learning Disabilities and other groups about the applications 11 states filed with the Education Department seeking waivers from the No Child Left Behind law?

What they don't say.

In a letter to federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan this week, NCLD Executive Director James Wendorf writes that the department's flexibility amounts to a trade off, with students with disabilities on the losing end of the swap.

Many groups that advocate for students with disabilities, including NCLD, heralded the No Child Left Behind law for finally holding schools accountable for these students.

But with the waivers, "important reforms such as college and career ready standards, higher quality assessments ... and a focus on sound teacher and principal evaluation systems are being driven by the department's guidelines for states seeking flexibility. Unfortunately, these reforms are being exchanged for a significant departure from accountability for achievement by all schools and for all students," he wrote.

Their concerns are reflected in a story earlier this month, in which my colleague Michele McNeilreviewed the applications and found that "a hallmark of the law—the emphasis on traditional subgroups of at-risk students, such as minority children, those with special needs, and English-language learners—would be scaled back."

In addition, NCLD took issue with the lack of detail in the applications about how states would phase out alternate exams taken by some students with disabilities, the so-called 2 percent exams. These alternate tests, which measure grade level work but are modified to have fewer questions or ask them more simply, can alter a student's ability to take certain classes or even graduate with a standard diploma, in some cases, and the administration had indicated a move away from these tests when NCLB is rewritten. However, five states that give the exams—Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Tennessee—didn't explain how they would taper off use of these tests in their applications, Mr. Wendorf said.

The group also took issue with the applications' lack of attention to professional development for teachers and the lack of specificity about special educators in teacher and principal evaluation and support systems.

But NCLD's greatest problem was with the stark lack of accountability for student subgroups the flexibility could provide.

They cited Kentucky as an example of a state where it would be highly unlikely that the performance of students with disabilities and other groups of students—based on race, income, and so forth—would ever be looked at closely again because of the way the state wrote its application.

"NCLD remains disappointed," Mr. Wendorf wrote, "that the department has sought to trade away the focus on accountability in exchange for flexibility rather than reforming what has made the difference for students with disabilities over the past decade."

This afternoon, the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities chimed in with other concerns about the waivers and the waiver process. Their letter, which includes about 20 endorsements including from Easter Seals and the National PTA, complains that parents didn't have nearly enough time to review states' applications before they were submitted. States gave stakeholders no more than two weeks (some gave less) to weigh in on complex applications that are in some cases hundreds of pages long.

They echoed NCLD's concerns about alternate tests based on grade-level standards, and the group worried that students with severe cognitive disabilities who take another alternate exam, based on alternate standards, would be left out of the accountability picture altogether.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act "requires that all students with disabilities be included in State and district-wide assessment programs," the group pointed out. "To leave students with disabilities being assessed by [the alternate assessment based on alternate standards] out of the growth component of the assessment and accountability program would be a violation of IDEA."

Article HERE.

Separate Education for Those in Special Education? Possibly

By Nirvi Shah from On Special Education

Will the teachers of students with disabilities, teachers who in many cases work with all subjects, have to meet a lesser standard than their counterparts? And will expectations for students with disabilities be lowered, too?

Maybe.

Those were some of the proposals offered during last week's markup of a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

One amendment offered by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would have removed the requirement that teachers of students with disabilities be "highly qualified."

The current version of ESEA, the No Child Left Behind law, says that all teachers must have degrees in the subject they teach and be state-certified, and the bill passed by the committee last week and headed for the Senate floor retains that language.

Why would Sen. Paul offer to give special educators a break on that requirement? Because meeting the requirement can be especially complex for special education teachers, who may teach many subjects, but who may only have degrees in special education.

"Teachers do face complications in meeting 'highly qualified'" requirements, said Lindsay Jones, senior director for policy and advocacy for the Council for Exceptional Children. But "we should not bluntly remove them."

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act already provides some exceptions for special education teachers so they can attain the qualification, she said. "The fear is setting up a separate system of education."

While the amendment was quashed in the committee, Jones said she is sure it will resurface when the bill is debated by the full Senate.

Another proposal that died in the committee came from Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. He wanted to do away with limits on how many students with disabilities could take alternate tests, which are different than those their classmates take.

"The underlying concern we have with Isakson and Paul [is that their message is] 'It's too difficult to accommodate you, so let's separate you," Jones said. "When that happens, it's separate but not equal. It's not a 21st century vision of society."

But don't count that proposal out, either, she said.

While there are still some things in the bill that affect students with disabilities that the CEC and other groups dislike, Jones applauded the education committee chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, for his remarks during the discussion of Isakson's testing proposal. If it passes in the long run, there is concern that the education of students with disabilities could become watered down.

She said Harkin tried to keep the focus on high expectations for these students. Harkin said that even kids with disabilities need a kick in the pants every once in a while, she recalled.

One thing that didn't come up at all, disappointing some advocates, was a proposal related to curbing the use of restraints and seclusion with students, although Sen. Harkin mentioned it during the debate.

Article HERE.

Teacher Makes a Personal Case for NCLB Waivers

By Greg Mullenholz, Guest Blogger for the ED.gov Blog

I would like President Obama to meet one of my former students, Rashawn*.

Rashawn was a fifth grader, an African-American boy with an Individualized Education Program (IEP). In my classroom he received a bevy of services relating to his learning and academic disabilities, and yet he struggled mightily with reading and math.

Rashawn came from a tough section of the district and lived well below the poverty line in a broken home. He father was incarcerated. He had dreams of playing in the NBA. His smile set him apart, and he was a hard worker, a talker, and a thinker.

Rashawn entered my class in 2008, shortly before the nation elected Barack Obama to be president. He was far behind his peers academically, but he worked hard. Working as a team, a special educator and I provided Rashawn with rigorous instruction, and we set high expectations. We wanted him to succeed, and he wanted to succeed. From the beginning of the year to the end, Rashawn made significant academic progress.

But none of that mattered, under the accountability measures of the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB). Although he showed academic growth, Rashawn scored as “basic” on Maryland’s tests. According to the statisticians and policymakers, that was a disappointment. As his teacher, NCLB noted that I had failed Rashawn. When my results were printed, he would appear as nothing more than a name and an ID number awash in pink printer ink.

Rashawn is a perfect example of why teachers are crying out for NCLB to be overhauled. NCLB ushered in an era where we no longer ignore children on the periphery. Now, every student counts. That’s one thing NCLB got right.

Unfortunately, the NCLB accountability system fails students like Rashawn because it measures only one piece of data at one point in time. We need an accountability system that acknowledges growth and looks upon every student as an asset, not a deficit. We need our country to measure and reward the growth of our students, not just mark where they place on an arbitrary bar.

I would like President Obama to meet Rashawn. It seems that he had the Rashawns of the world in mind when he granted Secretary Duncan the authority to issue waivers for some areas of NCLB. The President still insists on a high bar for all children, but he gets it that what Rashawn has achieved transcends what is indicated by a single-measure on a poorly-designed bubble test.

I am thankful that with waivers, states won’t be given a pass on maintaining high expectations for all students, and they surely won’t be allowed to toss aside teacher accountability. Our students need schools with high expectations, and states will have to adopt college- and career-ready standards. But they will also be given the chance to innovate and design plans that meet the needs of their unique populations of students. And they will be allowed to use multiple measures of teaching effectiveness, so that teaching competence will no longer be boiled down to a solitary line of printer ink.

I haven’t seen Rashawn in a few years. I hope that he aspires to attend and complete college and to play basketball while he’s there. I dream about him earning a teaching degree and joining me as a colleague. Fixing NCLB would be one way to support all of the Rashawns in the classrooms throughout this great country. Something even better, I think, than meeting the President.

Greg Mullenholz

Greg Mullenholz is a Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow on loan from Rockville, Md.

*My student’s name has been changed to protect his anonymity.

Article HERE.