Kevin Huffman, Tennessee state education commissioner, has decided that children with disabilities need to take the same standardized state tests as other children.
For many years, children with severe disabilities took an alternative test, but Huffman wants to put an end to that.
He says it is time to stop lying to these children.
“For years, the state has been hiding children with disabilities by giving them them the alternative test instead of the TCAP, Huffman said.
“They didn’t perform well on their first TCAP test, but “it’s important that we’re stopping the lying,” he said.
Please, dear readers, help me understand the mind of someone who thinks he is helping children with severe disabilities by requiring them to take a standardized test that many cannot read.
Is he launching a research project?
He certainly does not display any knowledge of the reasons for IEPs, so perhaps he acts from ignorance.
He must know that many severely disabled children will fail and feel deep anguish. So is he acting maliciously? Or, knowing the distress he will cause so many severely disabled children, is it sadism?
Whatever it is, it is not equity, it is not in the best interest of these children, and it is not reform.
Why not give them the same care provided by Harpeth Hall, a private school in Nashville where one of Huffman’s daughters is a student? Harpeth Hall does not give standardized tests. If Huffman is right, the school is hiding something and “lying” to their students by not testing them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is he insane?
I was the TA for a severely disabled student once – he had cerebral palsy and had the mind of a first grader in 8th grade.
I was forced to give him a standardized test once. I asked the teacher what I should do (bearing in mind I am now a teacher myself) and he told me to help him do the best I could…that mainly meant trying to get him from acting out and disrupting other students.
He didn’t understand what was being put in front of him and he knew a bit about how to fill in bubbles (though I usually had to help – I had to be careful to not choose the answer for him and he had trouble communicating which letter to choose) – you see he lacked motor control too – it’s one of those things about having a severe mobility disability.
It was a crazy thing for me to do 10 years ago and it’s crazy to do this on a large scale with several tests. The only thing this will serve to do is to depress scores further proving how much schools are “failing” kids – after all – if you want schools to fail, what better way to drive scores down than to identify populations of students that are most likely to achieve that, and make sure their scores are included.
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Oh and I hadn’t read the article before posting…he’s also going to adopt RTI for them as well….
RTI is NOT appropriate for these students!!! That is for students who should be able to achieve a certain level and aren’t without impairments.
Forcing students to come after school that have severe disabilities is going to hurt them and it’s going to hurt their families. What good does extra help do to a student that is physically incapable of achieving cognitive higher order thinking skills?
Worse, it will divert resources towards achieving unattainable goals in the most punitive way possible in a way that I doubt ANY qualified special education professional would approve of. Why not use that RTI money on meaningful special education supports?
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“What good does extra help do to a student that is physically incapable of achieving cognitive higher order thinking skills?”
You surely must be one of those union thug LIFO teachers who doesn’t believe all children can become “career and college ready” and doesn’t instill enough grit and determination in their students. Methinks you should become a member of the Teach For Awhile group for a little “re-orientation”.
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The goals for this student could not physically be career ready (for him college was out of the question). They were goals basically aligned with taking care of himself on a day to day basis and maybe picking up a menial job with a lot of repetition.
I guess that’s “career” ready in some sense.
It’s really strange in some ways that we pride ourselves on such a diverse country but then try to shove most of our children through a cookie cutter.
If believing this makes me a LIFO lazy union thug then sign me up.
It’s for the children (there now everything’s OK).
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He needs to test them in order to have the data to prove that they are not worth the academic investment and shuffle them away. It’s sort of like pedagogical eugenics.
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Actually, it’s another mechanism for the charter and voucher schools so that they can identify which students not to put into the entrance “lottery”. K. Hoofmum is just doing what his charterite/TFAer/voucherite sugar daddies are telling him.
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I am a little confused. The cited article says there is an effort to have MORE students with disabilities take the standard test, but it does not say all. The status quo seems to be that all students with disabilities take the same test which the article discribed as being designed for students with “severe disabilities”. Is that appropriate?
At the end it also talks about expanding a program to give students enhanced help so that students can remain in main line classes rather than be moved into special education classes. Does that seem seasonable?
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They all take the same test now. Children with disabilities have it read to them or have extra time on it. The article was very confusing. There isn’t a separate version of the test for the disabled. Huffman wants the test to no longer be read to the students, apparently.
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It certainly is confusing. Dr. Ravitch’s post also seems to say that there are two tests, not one given under different conditions. I assume the determination of the conditions are based on a student’s IEP?
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There are different types of assessments depending on what is recommended in the IEP & severity of the disability. Children with high incidence disabilities (Sp/Lang, LD, SED) take the TCAPS or Gateway standardized assessments. The alternate assessment (TCAP -Alt) in portfolio form is given to students with severe disabilities. Huffman is saying that IEP teams (e.g.,composed of parents, teachers, principals, & related service professionals) are lying about the child needing an Alternative assessment.
He wants to reduce the percentage of children who qualify for Alt-assessments and is justifying it by saying schools are lying about children’s individual educational needs.
In fact, Huffman is acting as 1) a king who overrides an IEP contract or 2) he has no idea of the purpose of an IEP.
We already know he is a contemptuous, know-nothing about education so ignorance might be an excuse for this decision. Or maybe he’s preparing us for what Jamie Woodson of TN SCORE said last year about kids in SPED- TN was not going to spend money on them.
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So when the article says tests it actually means the portfolio assessment and it is not the case that all of the 14% of students with disabilities have a portfolio evaluation, an unknown portion of those students take the TCAPS with accommodations. The article is unclear about which group of students with disabilities will take the standard test, though the article is clear that only some disabled students will under this plan. Posters here assume that it will be the most severely disabled that will be made to take the test, while presumably the less seriously disabled will continue to take the TCAPS with accommodation.
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There are 2 tests in Colorado and kids with severe disabilities get the modified version, which is administered one on one. Less severely impacted kids must take the standard version – even a child with a severe brain injury who functions at the 2nd grade level while in 4th grade must take the 4th grade test. And let me tell you, he is not too disabled to realize that he is not getting many answers right. Yet, he must sit there for the full 10 hours of testing and have it right there in his face as a reminder that he is “deficient.” That time could have been better spent actually teaching him something he needs to learn.
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Colorado does not have the portfolio evaluation that is used in Tennessee?
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When enhanced help is defined as RTI it is many times inappropriate particularly for those with severe disabilities.
One must ask, will the “help” achieve its goals.
The article does cite Huffman as targeting all special education students but I find it hard to believe that 14% are qualified as severely disabled. In NY we do offer similar appropriate supports (scribes, readers, extra time, special room etc.) for students for whom the exam is possible with the necessary supports.
If they’re discussing making children with SEVERE disabilities take several mainstream tests – it’s plain wrong – and the alternative assessment is identified as being for only the severely disabled.
Why should we essentially torture a student via testing and RTI before we give them the appropriate special education class if we KNOW where that student belongs (and most times we do know without a standardized test telling us).
It’s a way to cut back Special education funding by making it harder for students to get services, plummet schools scores, and disproportionately hurt public schools with not equal numbers of special needs students to charters (most of whom barely touch students with low amounts of disabilities – how many SEVERE disability students do these schools have?)
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Given that the article ays that there are separate tests for the two groups of students when apparently there is only one test, I am not sure how reliable any of the information in the article might be.
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Well, let me go back on what I said a little. There is an alternative assessment, a portfolio assessment, where a teacher will collect samples of a student’s work throughout the school year to demonstrate that that student meets the state standards. It isn’t a “test,” though, and I think Huffman may be intent on doing away with that. I’m sure that 14 percent of students don’t have a portfolio assessment, however, as it is very time-consuming for the teachers. They are also able to take the TCAP with the accommodations listed in their IEP, and that is what most of them do. Huffman is probably suggesting that we do away with the portfolio assessment as well as all accommodations.
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I agree. The 14% seems high but why should we trust Huffman’s stats when he will not let anyone verify them?
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Apparently much of the article is incorrect. I would not be surprised if the 14% was wrong as well.
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“Does that seem seasonable?”
Are you referring to baseball, football or basketball or to fishing, hunting or trapping? Or perhaps to beef, pork, chicken or fish?
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Duane, thanks for the laugh! When we read about someone as despicable as Huffman and his machinations, we all need to laugh, to ameliorate the abject horror of this enveloping dystopia.
Tennessee special ed. advocacy groups (CEC, LDA, CHADD, etc.)–speak up!
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In some cases this policy is CHILD ABUSE.
No need to be nice here, one-size-fits-all practices like this for all children with disabilities reveals a true idiot at the helm.
Pity those that must follow his lead; shame on those who empower such wicked incompetence.
Are you smiling old man BROAD?
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Galton,
Allow me to make a minor change to one sentence in an otherwise good post: “Shame on those that follow his lead”.
No one has to “follow his lead”. They could be doing the honorable and just course of action and defying his idiocies.
Duane
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Duane,
I have not said what you said I said. 🙂
And, Huffman is not merely some BROADIE fool on a hill, he has legally empowered agency!
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Galton,
Allow me to make another minor change to one sentence in another otherwise good post: “And, Huffman is not merely some BROADIE fool on a hill, UNFORTUNATELY/SADLY he has legally empowered agency! 😉
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…and soon he’ll be requiring physically disabled to exhibit their skills on the the fields and courts. A vulgar buffoon.
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Then why even create IEP’s anymore? Someone in TN needs to file a complaint with OCR.
Click to access complaint_form.pdf
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TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS CASE RESOLUTION AND INVESTIGATION MANUAL
Click to access CRIM.pdf
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Good idea, Linda. Look at Florida–D.o.J. filing a lawsuit for “warehousing.” And–re-read the blog on Louisiana and money spent on the disabled. Last but not least, the North Carolina sp.ed. vouchers. It’s clear where this is going.
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PERFECT analogy!
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“. . . and the Mind of a Reformer”
I didn’t realize that edudeformers had a mind. Learn something new everyday!
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You have been slacking off lately. I was waiting for one of your letter/word creations: the behind of a ??? Kind of a ???
I can’t do it without YOU.
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Sorry, it’s uncontrollable, Linda. Sometimes things pop into the head and other times “nada”. Just one of the many fascinating things about how the mind works/doesn’t work at times and how “learning” (whatever that is) occurs.
Is everything just a response to the environment in which we encounter ourselves?
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In my years of exposure to this, and I am NOT a special ed educator, I have seen a lot of change. As a regular classroom teacher (3rd and 4th for the past 20 years) (K-9 in other years) in Ohio, it has been a gradual process of putting as few students as possible in Spec Ed classes. It is hard to get an IEP for a student.
My belief has been that “subgroups” are counted individually in the district’s rating and that having a student with special needs in the “regular” classroom environment is considered beneficial to the district. When a subgroup is too small, it isn’t given a rating. Example: If you have 5 students out of a spec ed class of 10 who fail, that would be a 50% failure rate. I believe there is a cutoff where only groups of 12 or more in a specific grade level “count” as a subgroup. So, the special needs students were placed into our classes and we were trained (what a joke) to do “differentiated instruction” … which is a great concept … on paper … but is difficult to implement when you have 30 kids in your class. I “get it” but it is VERY difficult to do and very time consuming and exhausting.
If we had one or two kids out of 30 who didn’t pass, our rating was 93% passage. Even 5 failures out of 30 is 83% (in reference to my 5 out of 10 above). In other words, it is in the best interest of our schools to integrate as many kids into the regular classroom so that it spreads out the basic scores to all classes instead of putting the students into the same class. If ALL of the students’ scores counted in the spec ed classes instead of the students merely receiving intervention in special ed and returning to the regular room for testing, the scores would impact the district’s rating in a different (negative way).
Back to the early 90s … I knew of a strong advocate in Akron, OH, who wanted her son with Downs Syndrome to be integrated into the regular classroom. Public schools have done a lot to accommodate these desires and have done research and suggested all kinds of methods to better assist ALL students on being assimilated into the regular classroom environment, often for social reasons. However, I have noticed (and throw eggs at me if you wish) that there are so many people who live vicariously through their kids. They view them as a projection of themselves. Rather than accept their child’s differences for what they are, they want to convince society that the child isn’t different at all. This is noble and many strides have been made in achieving that goal. My students became more and more inclusive of kids who were “different”. However, no matter how we try, the social aspect of schools tends to force some relationships that don’t go any further than the classroom. And, without stating so, all the kids know “who is who”. It is just the nature of children.
People worry about whether their child is an eagle or a bluebird. Bottom line, if some kids are reading more difficult material, read faster, volunteer to help in class, are done with their work quickly, etc. ALL the kids know it. And, the opposite observations are made. You can’t “hide it” even if you stop using “labels” or “star charts”.
I just think education needs to get real. Parents and teachers need to get real. Politicians need to get real. The hocus pocus “fixes” need to be noted for what they are … attempts to normalize everything. Some parents and some politicians will go the extra mile to “prove” what they know is not reality. There will be exceptions, but no guarantees.
So, all this reform stuff … fails … because they are making mountains out of molehills, acting as if testing is a solution rather than a diagnostic tool, worrying about amorphous ratings instead of actually imparting education, and trying to please the monied class and the others who are only concerned about “every little thing” for THEIR kids without considering society as a whole.
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Deb: no eggs to throw.
As a former bilingual and then SpecEd TA, I know exactly what you are talking about. I hope the viewers of this blog read and reread your comments.
One particular point: you have made it clear—from an on-the-ground in-the-classroom perspective—that a large part of the current “education reform” agenda is simply about gaming the metrics. Other commenters have expanded on the “why” of that gaming.
This is what happens when the Holy Edumetrics of high-stakes standardized testing replaces human judgment and compassion.
Thank you for all your efforts for your students.
🙂
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Yes, it is all about the metrics used. In Ohio, the “bar” keeps changing, the target keeps moving, the definitions and choices of questions used keep changing, and the scoring changes. We defined teaching these days as: “We teach as if we are wearing blindfolds, shooting at a moving target the keeps changing size and depth”. It is so obvious that they are “playing games” with everyone. Now there is AYP and schools receive “grades”. My school has continued to do well so I can’t imagine what has gone on in some schools. But, it drove most of us to retiring.
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All good points.
Our school is a “school of focus” because our identified gifted scores are higher than the rest by too much (they say).
I have been a teacher only during NCLB and RttT (other than private schools). I wonder what it was like before that.
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“Our school is a “school of focus” because our identified gifted scores are higher than the rest by too much (they say). ”
So,… now you have an achievement gap? I suppose your regular population is not making AYP?
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“Please, dear readers, help me understand the mind of someone who thinks he is helping children with severe disabilities by requiring them to take a standardized test that many cannot read.”
I’ll take a shot at it.
Because the “choice” schools Mr. Huffman favors over the traditional public schools that most children attend enroll a lower percentage of disabled children, so he wants public school scores to go down? The worse public schools do the better privatizers do!
I think they should keep pushing for more and more standardized tests, because it discredits them. They’re completely ignoring parents at this point. We don’t want all these crappy, expensive, time-gobbling tests that are pushed by reformers. They just watched parents actually revolt in Texas. What will it take to push these dogmatic ideologues off the obsession with testing other peoples’ children? I suspect they CAN’T move away from tests, because without the tests there is no “school reform”. It’s ALL tests. They’ve contributed absolutely nothing else to traditional public schools other than a test obsession.
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I think you’ve got it!
In 2010, Duncan was floating the idea of changing the % of students who they would permit to qualify for Alt-assessments but I’m not certain if DoEd changed the regs.
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The only time severe disabilities is mentioned in the article is when it mistakenly talks about a test designed for the most severely disabled. It may be that Huffman is planing to require students with severe disabilities to take the test, but the article provides no evidence of it.
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Stop arguing or go away. Huffman is talking about the alternative assessments for kids with severe disabilities and the cap on the %ages the state will permit. There is no other assessment that has a % cap. You can’t understand the context of this because you aren’t an educator.
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Pssst, JC…now he is going to tell you about his son(s). Beware.
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I am just reading the article. A poster said it was incorrect that there was a special exam for severely disabled students, another poster added that students with some disabilities take the standard exam with accommodations. Most posters seem to think that the 14% does not refer to severely disabled students. I saw nothing in the article about an age limit.
If there is another source, perhaps you could post it.
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Does that mean leadership who signed on for RttT were suckers? What about the states that did not? Do they not get waivers from NCLB and if they don’t, then what happens when they don’t reach the goals?
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1. Yes. 2.They were wise. 3. Don’t know but California is pushing back- they didn’t want RttT and they don’t like the conditions for the waivers.
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Can someone point me to a specific traditional public school that has been improved by school reformers? Not one of the over-hyped “miracle” charters they favor. A traditional public school that was “transformed” by “reform”. Since the vast majority of kids go to traditional public schools NOT the “choice” schools reformers favor, we now have a situation where we have lots and lots of people in public positions who offer NO benefit to traditional public schools, best case, and actively harm traditional public schools, worst case.
How did this happen? How are the people who represent the interests of 5% of schools driving mandates that apply to 95% of schools?
How has Huffman benefitted traditional public schools in that state? Not charters and cybercharters and private schools.
That should be the question. If it WAS the question, they’d ALL be looking for work, including Arne Duncan.
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I have the very same questions.
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The answer to that question probably depends on what counts as traditional school, what counts as reform, and how we decide a school has been improved.
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Is there no end to the malicious, mean spirited behavior of some people in power? I can’t believe that the parents don’t storm his office with pitchforks.
I am literally sick to my stomach after reading this
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Maryland is moving away from some of the accommodations it has given to students with an IEP or 504 plan. One big one is reading the test to children. It appears that most states don’t do this, and as Maryland moves to PARCC, rather than getting other states to bend, Maryland is bending.
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This really comes down to the terrible misuse, overuse, and distortion of assessment. The purpose should be to drive instruction and there would be not one bit of information gained from this torture that could tell a teacher anything to help instruct these children. As the mother of a son with autism who has been required to take these tests each year (with accommodations per his IEP) I know that it is like throwing valuable instruction time down the garbage for him, and for the teachers who would much rather be spending their time teaching.
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AmyP- exactly. I’m sick of an ego maniac like Huffman deciding he knows more than a legally constituted IEP team decision.
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What a moron. I hope he is a proctor and sees the kids he is proclaiming this for.. By making this so ridiculous it will make the mainstream educators push these kids further in the basement. This is pure malevolence. Of course with reform comes the idea that all special kids should not be so special anymore- this business of reform “similar to their non disabled peers” is such a croak…. Look for the money folks….that is what it comes down to. Does he know the severity of the disability of these kids ? Of course, this applies only to kids in public schools as the charges would never consider these kids on their rosters. Wake up folks. This is an outrage to these kids and their families.
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Kevin Huffman, Governor Haslam, and the reformers have no mercy for children… except their own who attend expensive private schools, of course.
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I thought Huffman’s dramatic language sounded familiar:
Duncan says when the academic bar is set higher, what often happens is test scores go down. And achievement gaps between groups, which are already often large, often become larger.
He gives the example of Tennessee: “They saw test scores in math go from about 90 percent proficient to about 30 percent proficient.”
But Duncan says test scores go down because in his words, “we’re telling the truth for the first time.”
“That’s the brutal truth, that’s the reality,” he says. “We have to stop lying to students and families, we have to be very, very honest and move from there.”
Yes, public schools have been “lying” to people, and only the noble free market reformers like Duncan and Huffman tell the truth. What arrogant , sanctimonious nonsense. Is there some reason school reformers seek to discredit public school leaders and employees and tell parents they’ve been “lied” to? Is this what we’re paying Duncan and Huffman for? Self-aggrandizing drama and accusations?
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As if Duncan has established himself as a knowledgeable, committed, professional and credentialed educator.
Why should parents, students and teachers listen to anything he says?
His claim to fame is jumping on the Chicago privatization cabal and playing basketball with Barack.
Posted this elsewhere, but he also fits the mold:
I just started Finnish Lesson by Pasi Sahlberg. I must share this paragraph:
Even in business, these larger than life strategies of turnaround and improvement do not produce sustainable improvement. Companies may be broken up, assets sold off, and employees fired with impunity, and all this might increase short term shareholder returns, but few strategies of these sorts survive in the long term and many turn around companies eventually become casualties of their leaders’ reckless behaviors. Indeed, management expert Manfred Ket de Vries explains how many so-called turnaround specialists are little more than psychiatrically disturbed narcissists, sociopaths, and control freaks (Ket de Vries, 2006).
http://www.finnishlessons.com/
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It’s a great quote.
I don’t think Duncan’s bullying will work with parents. It was easy to demonize and demean teachers. They’re a discrete group who can be lumped together. It may be tougher to do to parents who resist.
I’m dreading Common Core. I think the upgraded online testing system is just a back-door way to go to “blended learning” and stick kids in front of a screen for 4 hours a day. We have no funding as it is. I can’t imagine how we’re going to pay for Common Core testing.
My hope is Ohio bails on the plan. That way we can try to maintain the schools we have, locally, despite the cuts in funding and what seems like outright hostility to traditional public schools from state and federal politicians. We’re essentially on our own anyway. If we can dump the federal and state mandates and gimmick spending, maybe we can maintain our schools.
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Unfortunately one of the purposes of the national standards and the required testing is to shame us even more. They are salivating at the prospect of more “failing” schools, teachers and children.
Ranking, stacking, shaming, firing and closing is the name of the game.
But I don’t see the end game…once they’ve destroyed it all, what will they have?
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Linda @ 7:38,
All the power and money!!
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In a dysfunctional, screwed up, dog eat dog society?
They won’t be safe for long.
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TE: Good point about being honest about our high school graduates.
Think back to high school.
Hormones.
Dating.
Guys in the back of the class talking about the giant doobie they will smoke at lunch.
You have the students who want to excel and achieve and you have the ones who just want to get through. Think about the movies depicting high school in US. Think about “Fast Times at Ridgemont High;” “Sixteen Candles;” “The Breakfast Club;” “Ferris Bueler’s Day Off.” It does not surprise me one bit what our average reading level is–it reflects our society. Or the eighties. Or something.
I have absolutely no answers on any of this past elementary (and even then I just have hunches), but just pointing that out. We are honest about it. Look at our movies.
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““That’s the brutal truth, that’s the reality,” he [Duncan] says. “We have to stop lying to students and families, we have to be very, very honest and move from there.””
Who’s the “we” in that one blArne? My cerebral pressure upon reading that bit of “wisecracking”, oops I mean what passes for wisdom coming from an idiot, almost caused me to keel over.
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Reading that made me sick. He’s the %#%#%# liar. He’s the one manipulating the public while he serves his masters, Bill and Eli.
I hate frauds, shysters, and liars. One man, who never taught, controls our profession and our schools…disgusting.
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I have some sympathy for Duncan here.
As Dr. Ravitch points out, almost everyone gets a high school diploma eventually. Does that mean everyone reads at the 12th grade level? Does it mean that everyone reads at the 8th grade level? There was a high school teacher who posted in another thread who claimed that many many of her students read somewhere between the 1st and 4th grade levels.
If reading on the 4th grade level is what it takes to graduate from high school we might want to acknowledge it and not pretend that high school graduates read at a high school level.
When it comes to math, I noted the other day that the Salt Lake City Community College offers the following set of courses for high school graduates to take BEFORE elementary algebra:
College Prep Math 1
College Prep Math 2
College Prep Math 3
College Arithmetic
Fractions Workshop
Developmental Math
Pre-Algebra
Pre-Algebra Workshop
After elementary algebra a student takes intermediate algebra, moves on to college algebra, next to trigonometry, on to Precalculus, if necessary a course in calculus techniques, to finally arrive at calculus 1.
If being a high school graduate means that you are only eight courses away from elementary algebra, we might as well be honest about it.
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For most students with disabilities, quality instruction and the proper accommodations and modifications will allow them to meet the same expectations as their nondisabled peers. I applaud Huffman on this because, as a special educator, I’ve seen firsthand the low expectations that often come with special ed – as if all disabilities are equal.
There are some students with more significant cognitive disabilities, and it is entirely appropriate for them to be given an alternate assessment. In TN a teacher-developed portfolio is used. Federal regulations cap that at 1% of the total student population, or about 7% of students with IEPs. The important consideration for eligibility here is that the students’ disabilities prevent the regular test from being meaningful. Huffman is not trying to change the policy for this alternate assessment.
What he is trying to change is the prevalence of a modified version of the regular test (capped at 2% of total, or 15% of those with IEPs). This test has fewer items, shorter passages, and three (rather than four) choices. In an effort to boost scores, many students have inappropriately been given the modified test; for example, many schools have reserved this test for their highest-performing special education students. This is what Huffman is trying to change.
The new policy says that, rather than all students with IEPs being eligible, the modified test is only for those who just miss eligibility for the alternate (1%) assessment and whose disabilities prevent them from proficiency on the regular test. Thus, students with learning disabilities would generally not qualify because, with accommodations (e.g., read-aloud), they can be proficient. Now, that doesn’t mean that they will, of course, just that they can.
Some will ask about those students who are multiple grade-levels behind. But that should not be the question, as there are many nondisabled students who are also multiple grade-levels behind and aren’t given a modified test. The relevant question is why these students are behind – is it because of their disabilities, or is it due to some other factor? If it’s the former, then they can take the modified test; if it’s the latter, then they should take the regular test with accommodations. Oftentimes, even though these students with IEPs are behind, they are actually performing on the same level as their grade-level nondisabled peers.
In sum, the issue is which of the three assessments is most appropriate for each child. And that decision should be made based on each child, not how the score might affect the school’s AYP status.
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So there are two versions of the test after all?
Is it correct to say that a student would be evaluated using one of these five methods in the state?
Standard exam
Standard exam with accommodations
Modified exam
Modified exam with accommodations
Portfolio evaluation
And is it also correct to say the policy proposal is to move some students from taking the modified exam (with or without accommodations) to taking the standard exam (with or without accommodations)?
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Yes, teachingeconomist, I think that is correct.
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First Responses – are you an educator in Tennessee? Is your comment based on your experiences there? I am not in Tennessee and am neither agreeing nor disagreeing – just trying to understand the current situation and what Kevin is recommending.
Thanks.
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Sorry to be so unprofessional, folks, but I can’t stomach Huffman anymore. He’s an a**hole, plain and simple.
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