Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants students with disabilities to take the same standardized tests as students without disabilities, reports Joy Resmovits at Huffington Post.
The change “could have profound effects on some of the nation’s most vulnerable learners.”
“Since President Barack Obama came into office, his administration has upheld and advanced policies that have increased the stakes of standardized testing, arguing that student progress ultimately matters above all other concerns. Policies such as the Race to the Top competition derive from the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which tied federal school aid to standardized test results.”
In the immortal words of Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid:
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Probably siding with the vast majority of parents of children with special needs who want their children assessed in the same way as every other child. Perhaps you’re forgetting that the vast majority of special needs students have learning disabilities and speech and language disabilities. These students, with proper instruction, and appropriate accommodations should be performing on par with their non-disabled peers. Failure to test them in the same manner makes it impossible to see if they are, indeed, receiving a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), as is their right.
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This is a prime example of a philosophy that strikes the right humane chord in principle, yet the practical ramifications from the implementation work counter to the goal.
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I’m not sure why it isn’t practical. Since most students are tested (whether you approve of the tests or not), why not include students with disabilities unless they have very extreme disabilities. IEP teams must decide whether the student is capable of taking these tests and parents are included in those team decisions.
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Read the other comments below.
Also, this policy seems to apply to all children, whether or not they are capable of taking the test. That’s obviously impractical.
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Perfectly right. It sounds compassionate. But it is setting the students up for failure.
This ill-advised policy is what happens when people with no training in education gain control of education.
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Taking the same test on material covered with the proper modifications makes sense. Sometimes this works, but sometimes it doesn’t. But, diagnostically speaking, it is informative.
Taking a test for which no one can possibly be “prepared” designed for failure for kids who have always been doing well, only to be told, “No you aren’t” is bad for those kids. Now, think of how terribly bad it must be to take a test with NO modifications or few modifications designed for failure of the average to good student. Just how much “lower” will these students feel? Will this bring them upwards? I doubt it. It will drive them to drop out, unless they are forced to remain, to fail again, and again, and again. What do such tests achieve?
It is like asking someone who has never ridden a bike to be forced to enter the Tour de France. Guess what? They’ll lose and probably give up, even if they were able to figure out how to balance themselves on a bike.
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Also, this idea of the “vast majority of parents…” wanting something would seem to need some kind of evidence to support it. And even if all parents wanted something, if it isn’t practical, it isn’t practical.
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My evidence isn’t scientific, but it does come from the past 18 years of both individual and systemic advocacy for children with disabilities and their parents.
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I tend to disbelieve you, because if you did, you would know about Section 504 and NCLB.
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I can see by your reply that you are not in the classroom with these students. Your answer sounds so fair. The reality is quite, quite different. The reality is much more complex. I am presuming your good intentions so here is my advice. I invite you to enter multipe classrooms on many school days. When you are there watch the teachers teaching the students with special needs. Really absorb their hard work and multiple stratgies. Then come on back to those same schools on testing days. Look in the eyes of these same children and once again pay close attention to what is happening for them. Then go back to your office and combine the reality with the philosophy.
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Rights can be waived, if they’re actually rights.
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They are the strongest rights that any students have in this country.
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So students and parents should be able to waive their right to be tested. If it is indeed a “right.”
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You are correct. The IEP team can decide, with the parents’ input, that the student won’t take the standardized test.
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Appropriate instruction and appropriate accommodations! Therein……
School systems and states have dedicated and prescribed accommodations for SWD, against IDEA, but keep IEP teams from truly recommending the needed accommodations. I.e., students with severe reading disabilities – read to accommodations in class and on tests. Hardly happen in ToxicTesting climate. It is Sink-or-Swim!
Truly dyslexic kids catch Hell! We know what we as educators need to do, but current practices are insane and heartless. Kids drop out and high percentage of kids with specific learning disabilities, esp in reading, end up in prisons.
How’s it working for us? Or, our kids?
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No doubt assessing where a student with disabilities is vital but these mandated high stakes tests are anything but valid. To use the results to compare a special needs with all others is as Noel Wilson says “vain and illusory”. To understand why, read and understand his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society
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Very nicely stated Duane! This is why my three daughters attend a Montessori school, one in the lower elementary and two in the upper elementary. In addition to the fact that there are no grades, they are in mixed age classrooms. Segregating children by age in traditional schools might make it easier to “rank and publish” grades, test scores, etc and to force feed content from the top down but it is a very limited and inefficient way to learn.
Maria Montessori said “to segregate by age is one of the cruelest and most inhuman things one can do, and this is equally true for children. It breaks the bonds of social life, deprives it of nourishment… Our schools show that children of different ages help one another. The younger ones see what the older ones are doing and ask for explanations … There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with utmost ease… In our schools, the five year old feels himself a protector of the younger one.”
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Very true!
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In Being and Nothingness, Part II, Chapter 1, Sartre speaks of “the education system” being an institution for “making children ashamed of what they are.” Duncan and his ilk seem intent on turning that bleak assessment into a prophecy.
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The students wouldn’t be in special ed in the first place if they can do the work. BTW, the students already HAVE to take those tests if they are LD–LD kids are NOT allowed to take alternate testing. LD students take those tests with accommodations and modifications.
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You are forgetting that the instructions for many of these tests specifically do NOT allow appropriate accommodations for many children with disabilities in the area of reading. Where once teachers were allowed to read sections to those students who struggled to read are NOT allowed to help them now. Sure, the state allows a few accommodations such as extra time, quiet setting etc.. So, what are we really wanting to find out from these standardized exams? Why do we let children whose disability is in reading sit there and cry because they don’t understand/can’t read it all/can’t comprehend the same exam as their regular ed peers? How does that give teachers good information upon which to gear instruction? How is it moral to put kids through this for many, many hours each school year? Should we evaluate kids? Absolutely, but make it meaningful and let’s not make kids thing they are failures! These kids already know they have a hard time reading!
I disagree that testing them in the same manner as non-disabled peers can actually deny a student FAPE. In the end, what have we done to these kids?
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Perfect questions! Those can’t be answered by reformers. They don’t think outside of their own understandings. I think empathy is the missing ingredient.
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And, Beth, with all the secrecy–er, I meant to say test “security”– surrounding these tests (and we all know it’s because they are NOT “standardized” (neither valid nor reliable) tests, have lousy questions and lousy answers (think Pineapple question, & then multiply it–Math questions with more than one right answer, with no right answer, etc., ad nauseum–& I DO mean nauseum!), I’d wager a bet that NO reading of these tests (in the areas of Math and others not involving reading comprehension) will be allowed in the future, even if that’s the accommodation that’s most needed for the individual student. DUH–THAT’S why the student is an special ed. & has what is called an INDIVIDUALIZED Education Plan.
And THAT I.E.P. is SUPPOSED to create the framework for each sp.ed. student to reach her/his full, maximum potential–NOT testing, testing, testing with these INVALID, poorly worded and poorly constructed “standardized” tests.
The only –and I do mean ONLY–purpose for this incessant testing is more ka-ching for Pear$on and its ilk.
In addition to Duane’s usual excellent explanation of Wilson, above, read Todd Farley’s Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry.”
And–National Council on Learning Disabilities–you are NOT the voice of America’s special education students, parents and teachers (does anyone hear this rhetoric coming from the Council for Exceptional Children or the Learning Disabilities Association of America?). And–people at Easter Seals–have you ever read Valerie Strauss’ tragic story of the severely impaired Florida sp.ed.
trudent who had to take the test?
If not, I HIGHLY recommend that you all do so.
In conclusion, I CANNOT see how having more and more sp.ed. students tested “raises the educational bar” for them, or makes them more “college & career (yeah, ready for a “career” at Walmart!) ready.”
The truth is, high stakes testing (and keep changing the names–“Common Core, ” or whatever you reformers out there want to call it–WE all know what it is-$$$$$) LOWERS the bar for EVERY child.
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I would be one of those parents of a child with special needs who takes modified tests here in Texas. I don’t think you have any understanding of the realities of these tests. If you want to do away with modified tests…well, fine ONLY if the associated high stakes are removed. I will not have my child punished with grade retention or being denied a high school diploma based solely on these tests. None of these things will erase her disabilities. I invite you to follow our journey. Call me. Let me show you how this works in reality. My daughter sits in regular classes with her peers and they have high expectations. She has come so very far. But, due to her disabilities, sometimes it’s necessary to have things explained in simpler language. Do you even understand what constitutes a modified test? It’s essentially the same test, the same standards are tested, except the testing items may be phrased with simplified language. And there may be one less answer choice. How is this unreasonable for a child with reading comprehension and math calculation disabilities? What possible good does it do to retain her or deny her a diploma based on a standardized test? She works hard, passes her classes, sometimes with a hard-earned C, and its clear from reviewing her work that she is learning. But the tests are a barrier. So, either you give her a test that she can realistically understand all the testing items, or you eliminate the high stakes and use it diagnostically. But if you eliminate the modified test, be aware what will be measured is her disability, not her knowledge of the concepts. This is why she needs to have a test that measures her comprehension of the concepts taught with modifications that attempt to compensate for the disability. Otherwise, you are simply testing her disability. I cannot approach my IEP/ARD committee and dictate that she not take the tests or I would have done that years ago. It’s not even an option. It makes me angry that anyone would suggest that this is what all parents of special ed kids want. NOT true.
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Tests should be used to determine progress and plan for the next step, not a determination of what a student can’t possibly know because he/she hasn’t been exposed to it or can’t even comprehend the questions.
Honestly, it is like giving me a test in a Chinese language. Guess what? I can tell you ahead of time. I’d FAIL. I know nothing about it.
How about we give the supporters of this madness a test on their understanding of Child Development and Pedagogy? Guess what? They’d fail.
It just gets more and more ridiculous.
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You obviously never proctored a room full of special education students taking these exams. The frustration and anger that sitting for these test manifests is more than palpable. The damage done would make your head spin. if you truly want to advocate for special needs students you should be working to strike down CCSS and the stage a legal battle against the shameless, corporate whores behind this mess.
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Those children already take the state tests with accommodations. Children with cognitive impairment at the mild, moderate, severe and profound level take the alternate test, and even that is ridiculous. I have worked with this population of children my entire career. They don’t need to take state tests to be college and career ready. Arnie Duncan and whoever thought of this are nuts.
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ALL students with mild to moderate disabilities already take the same assessments as every other child. It’s been mandated by federal law for years. Any & all testing modifications &/or accommodations must be written in the IEP.
The question is- why is Duncan targeting SPED when he directed OSEP to remove state-level compliance with IEP’s as a priority?
Duncan has used ‘civil rights’ issues as the hook for other terrible, policies that are increasing discrimination against children with disabilities, so it is logical for us to look beyond his platitudes and marketing rhetoric. In short- Duncan is untrustworthy.
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agreed but the defining issue is “with proper instruction and appropriate accommodations” Duncan and company need to admit that politics interfere with the learning process: the IDEA has NEVER been fully funded.
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WHOA…if there ever was a meaner and more dysfunctional person, it is ARNE. Man is guy really punitive and repressive. How can anyone learn with this kind of atmostphere permeating schools.
BTW, I have an autistic cousin.
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Anyone involved in policy should have to teach what they preach. I will sit in the back for an entire year, without pay, so I can learn how to teach from YOU. So to all you deformers out there – SHOW ME!!!
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Are you from my Missouri?
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I second Butch and the Kid. What do the Secrwetary and the President stand for in education, apparently it is not public education.
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Spend a day with special education children. See how they learn. See what makes them smile. See what makes them struggle. Watch them take a test. Watch them cry. Help them with their work. Solve their daily issues. And if you survive your first day, Mr. Duncan, keep doing this work for a few years, and then maybe, you might just have some wisdom worth discussing.
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Correct. And, he needs to be there when they mainstream all the students with special needs into a classroom with ONE teacher and 25 other kids who also need the teacher’s guidance. He needs to realize that the expectation that a “great and deserving teacher” is expected to meet ALL the needs of ALL the kids … simultaneously, and then will be “graded” on ONE TEST SCORE as to how effective he/she is. What a load of bull.
It is just like everything else in life … if one thing takes up all of your time, something else is left undone. You can’t do all things for all people in all areas at one time with no help. And, now there is no respect. It is the “do more with less” mantra. It is the “work two years and find something else to do” directive. It is the data driven, “See, you aren’t effective since you can’t get all your kids to learn at the appropriate age level and get the faster ones to excel beyond the others” simultaneously when one kid takes up much of your day needing one on one assistance. You wind up HOPING that the faster kids will ‘be ok”.
I have had VERY BRIGHT kids without an IEP who have sat in a standardized IOWA test panicking because they didn’t go as fast as needed (because they are very meticulous) … but the test format is always “right” and the methods are “best”. According to whom?
I have seen kids shut down completely, give zero effort, shrug off the test … to prove a point … “You can’t MAKE me do this.” I saw one boy beat his head against his desk and burst into tears because he was not going fast enough. I had a very bright kid who decided that what he had written was all wrong and he spent 5 minutes erasing it and only had about 15 minutes to correct it. On and on … Yes, the tests “work” for some kids. But, they don’t work for all of them. And, extra time doesn’t always work … They get tired. They get bored. They get frustrated. They refuse to do it. They are independent.
But by all means, let’s “grade” them on doing something that they have no idea about and that they will never benefit from learning.
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exactly!!!
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There’s a quotation from a Paul Newman movie that I think applies to corporate education reform. It comes from The Towering Inferno, right at the end, as Newman’s character sits on the sidewalk after finally getting the ravaging fire in the building put out:
“I don’t know. Maybe they just oughta leave it the way it is. Kind of a shrine to all the the bull—- in the world.”
I think that is an apt description of what would should do with these corporate reforms once people come to their senses and realize how wrong-headed and harmful they are.
Let people see the insanity that once ruled and say “Wow, did they really judge everything and everybody by standardized test scores…”
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When I read these kinds of comments, I feel like bashing my head against a wall until I can make sense of it. But, I am already seeing stars. What in the world do these people think learning is about? What do they think evaluations are about? What do they know? Have they been living in some glass tower where everyone succeeds and is brilliant on all things at all times? If so, where is that place? Do they even know a student with a disability? Do they not know that often the disability SLOWS LEARNING? Do they not know that while some kids learn “instantly” that others take 25-27 repetitions in order to comprehend? And do they know that some won’t comprehend after 100s of repetitions? Do they know anyone who has limitations? Do they not have any limitations themselves? Do they think that all people even WANT to know the things they insist on knowing? Where do they get these ideas? Common sense seems to be missing. I am sitting here shaking my head as I type. Does learning consist of buying into only certain concepts and abandoning others? If it would serve any purpose, I would sit here and SCREAM.
Do I wish all kids could learn the same things at the same pace? Sure. Is it possible? NO. Just saying it “will be so” doesn’t make it happen. And, if people who have tried innovations and different methods of teaching, including the use of computer technology, have determined that it will take some students longer to learn then the fact is THEY NEED MORE TIME. And, some of the students will NEVER learn what others do.
I have a brother in law with a blind brother. He is now 58. He is trainable, not educable. He can follow commands, but he can’t learn anything to do with mathematical reasoning. And, he has been worked with all his life. Should he have taken a test at age 8, 10, 12, etc. to prove to others that his teachers and parents were failures? Good grief. People have given up their entire lives for this man. No test will improve his learning. And, that is ok. He has a right to be who he is.
The more Arne Duncan opens his mouth, the more I am certain that he has ZERO common sense.
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But since this “machine” is not focused on real, live children each bursting with gifts and grace, the machine goes off the rails with no one at the throttle, as machines tend to do.
A ten year girl paralyzed from the waist down by SMA and confined forever to a wheelchair is rolled into the testing room. The spinal muscular atrophy now has advanced to palsy in both hands. The blood flow to her brain is compromised by the atrophy so her ability to think and problem-solve is fuzzy most of the time.
Her constellation of disabilities are not susceptible to wise & warm instruction and accommodation. But they schedule her for the tests anyway and because she is a deeply loved child, she blesses them with her participation, even though everyone knows that it is an empty act, detached completely from assessment, progress and achievement.
It is a number crunching game that requires the trembling hand of a child to be supported while she attempts to fill in the answer bubbles to questions she cannot comprehend.
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What you describe is pure insanity of policy and child abuse!
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“WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?”
Here’s a scenario:
Cue cheesy Theremin soundtrack, circa 1950’s fleabag sci-fi movie (a la “Plan Nine From Outer Space”).
Scene: Alien Invaders, having taken over/destroyed the Republic’s institutions, issue a final demand to the remaining bands of Homo sapiens holding out against widespread Alien cannibalizing of humanity:
Alien Invaders: “Puny earthlings, resistance to your Uber Lords from Oligarkia is futile. Surrender now!” (Sound of electronic weaponry heard in background)
Virtually every action, word and gesture of the Overclass reveals that they think of themselves as a separate, more rightfully privileged and entitled species than run-of-the-mill humanity: the multiple homes they don’t live in, the black Cadillac Escalades they are chauffeured around in, their gated communities and hyper-policed urban neighborhoods, the food – unlike the genetically-engineered food-like products increasing consumed by the riff-raff – they eat…
Who are these people?
They are our Meritocratic Overlords, and they’re just better than you and me.
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Bingo. Another word for them is “parasites,” for that is what they are.
Meritorious is the LAST thing these cretins are.
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And, as is indicated by several posts here, there seems to be this denial that all kids are NOT the same. I don’t know why we would WANT them to be. We aren’t the same. Never were. Never will be. Not in America. Not where we have the pooled genes of almost every ethnicity or earth. We are unique. We are many. We are individuals.
I know that many people who have autistic kids simply deny its ramifications. Sometimes they don’t admit it. I had one boy who was autistic, but we couldn’t say the term around him or his family. We just did what we needed to do. But he was years behind the others. He had to wear diapers until the 2nd grade. He took his tests in a modified setting. Denying his problems didn’t negate their existence.
Others are looking for answers or a breakthrough or a miracle. They can’t believe that their child isn’t “normal”. And often they believe their child is really exceptional, if only someone would give the child enough time to unlock their world. The desires are myriad. It is understandable. We all want our kids to grow up and succeed. We want them to be the best they can be. But, we have to look at their capabilities and we have to accept the fact that for some kids, it will take more time than for others. The tests do NOT account for this.
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In order to keep the number of kids “identified” into subgroups, our district promotes differentiated instruction. Much of the knowledge required in order to do this is similar to that used by special education teachers. Yet, most of us had no training in that area. Maybe we should have all gotten degrees in special education. I sometimes think that if we treated all elementary aged students with that much attention … and the requisite 12 student maximum in the classroom, we’d have much different results in all areas. However, there isn’t enough money to be found to put students into classrooms of 12. Therein lies much of the problem.
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Be careful what you say. Before you know it, all teachers will be required to take special ed workshops, so they can claim you are trained.
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Well, if things continue on the path they are going, the certifications that we have will soon be meaningless, anyway. My only point was that, if we had 12 kids per class in the earlier grades and were truly able to address ALL their needs, they would be better able to pursue learning in grades 5 upward. Our society is so caught up on students of a certain age being able to do certain things, that it doesn’t take anything else into consideration. “If you are in x grade you should perform at x level.” The fact that whether a child is born on schedule, premature, had birth complications, had illnesses in early years, had delayed speech, etc. impacts who that child is and impacts his/her learning. When kids enter kindergarten, they are sometimes a year apart in age. And this continues throughout school. It impacts how they learn, how they play, how they are able to socialize, how they succeed. As they age, those differences matter less and less. But, as I see it, these CC tests don’t even address the age differences that are used in norm-referenced tests. They lump all kids in a grade level in the same pool and they sink or swim.
However, there are many techniques and pedagocical styles that are used in special ed classrooms that are beneficial to the regular classroom teacher. Unfortunately, the education offered doesn’t include this. And, teachers shouldn’t have to pay to get more education in order to keep their jobs, esp when there is less and less willingness to pay teachers fair wages.
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I left out a word or two in my haste. In order to keep the number of kids “Identified” into subgroups LOW, our district promotes differentiated instruction, requiring all teachers to serve all student needs, without assistance or an aid, and in class sizes that are too large. Oh, we have managed “success” but there is constant teacher turn-over, most teachers that could, have retired. Yes, we “succeeded” but at the cost of our health and confidence. No matter how well things went, it was always, more, more, more … to exhaustion.
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My comment was tongue in cheek; I am an old, unemployed special education teacher. More and more students are being pushed into regular classrooms with inadequate support; somehow, a resource teacher is supposed to be able to cover several classes at once. I have never quite understand how they could trumpet differentiation and then test all students with the same standardized instruments, but what do teachers know.
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Whenever I hear the EdReformers spouting such crap about equal competition with gen.ed. students, and the need to find out what they truly are able to do, I take it a step further to the ridiculous …… I ask them if they support Special Olympics.
Oh YES! Love all those little Downs hugging and joyfully participating. Makes them all feel so wonderful inside. Humanity at its best!
Then I propose this: why even have Special Olympics? We are short changing those students. They need to practice more intensely, for years until they can compete against the world’s top athletes. We are keeping them segregated and not giving them the opportunity to compete against someone of Michael Phelps! In International Olympics!
I get the worst reaction at that point. How can I be so heartless and cruel?
Really!?
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Who are these people? People I wouldn’t have anything to do with if I could avoid them. Unfortunately I can’t. Such is the nature of the beast. And in this case, they are beastly. They are obviously people who haven’t taught a day or lick in their life. One of the most rewarding classes I ever taught was an elective computer class for a group of students who were classified as “developmentally and intellectually challenged”. They were a challenge to plan for and teach; but we accomplished a great deal. Their parents and the principal were pleased with their progress. So was I. But to suggest that they be given a test on par with regular ed students is an affront. What a bunch of delusional and sanctimonious fools. Glad I only have to listen to them, but not work or live in proximity to them. Thank you!
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Precisely!
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This is outrageous. I am a general education teacher in Philadelphia. I have taught classes that have had up to 50% Special Ed students in them with NO support. I wrote about my experiences giving the state tests to these students here:
“Every spring, the Philadelphia public school students take the standardized tests, or PSSAs. (Starting in 2013, the district has switched to a different test called the Keystone Exams.) These tests are a huge part of how schools are evaluated and rated. It is from these scores that Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) is determined. There is a big push to prepare the eleventh graders for the tests from the beginning of the year to test day, usually after the first of the year. This particular year at Vaux, the students took the test over a course of several days. They were divided into several different classrooms for three to four hours in the morning, with two teacher proctors per room. All eleventh graders take the test, even the SPED students. Schools across the country take statewide tests very seriously, because of the implications that they present. In the five high schools where I have taught, there has been a common atmosphere at test time: the school is quiet and rules must be strictly enforced. In the classroom that I proctored at Vaux, it was sometimes a challenge to maintain the serious atmosphere.
There were five students in the room I proctored. Four were SPED students. One was MMR, and read at a first grade level. He was given the same test. After a few minutes, he put his head down, because he did not understand the reading. Teachers are not allowed to help, only to say, “Do the best you can.” He didn’t even bother to ask.”
Chapter 3, page 80. Passed On: Public School Children in Failing American Schools
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What an idiot Duncan is. Kids who are LD, the vast majority of “special needs” kids, already HAVE to take the same tests as the general student population but with accommodations and modifications. If the idiot knew anything about IDEA, let alone NCLB, he wouldn’t have said something this brazenly stupid.
BTW, kids who are more severe take alternate testing because they simply can’t do the standardized tests–and I mean cognitively and physically can’t do it.
Duncan needs to get out of Washington.
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Susannunes….I agree…although in PA, over the years, the types of accommodations that one can implement during the testing has dwindled down to just a handful of environmental variables. No allowance for specialized interaction assistance with receptive or expressive language challenges.(except for the use of sign language interpreters during directions) That has had me very concerned..
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It doesn’t surprise me, Jo.
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This should make every public school teacher in America want to revolt!
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I am racking my brain why he would say such an ridiculous thing. Surely his advisors informed him of IDEA and FAEP requirements long ago. He is to shrewd of an operator to make such a blunder. So eliminate ignorance of the law as a possible excuse for his words Yet there has to be a calculated reason that the nation’s education leader would direct the attention of the public in this direction. From experience we know that reason has to somehow benefit the financial welfare of Duncan’s corporate alliances and chums. That’s a automatic given. There are huge, huge sums of money in special education program financing. I am sure the corporate reformers long ago caught the scent of that trail; Adaptive equipment, diagnostic assessments, behavior task analyses, life skills activities, functional academics, specialized instruction, multi-sensory materials, computer software, assistive technology…HUGE money. What could the scheme be? Just how could results showing nationwide low performance of special education populations on the standardized testing enable them to make a grab for those monies. Do they have snazzy innovative programs in the wings?. Of this I am rather certain. Is it that low scores will justify the corporate reformers heroic intervention to save these vulnerable neediest of needy in the public’s eye? Just what new scheme do they have in mind? I do have my suspicions. I see what is fomenting and brewing now in Philadelphia. I could feel something bubbling in the special education winds for awhile now. The elimination of a Special Education Director, and the renaming of special education offices to be now termed Office of Specialized Services including everything from language translators to bus transportation…the elimination of ‘pull-out’ interventions with special educators only assisting students within regular classrooms, the slow elimination of learning support classrooms …all seemed so odd to me. Whatever it is, it will involve a large exodus of special education teachers and specialists from public school payrolls, yet obviously there still remains a need for the skills. How do they plan on bringing back those highly qualified skills at a significantly lower expense to the school district than maintaining full time special educators on staff? Might it will involve contracting for special education services from with private human service agencies? (which pay very poorly BTW) Time will only tell. One thing is for certain, these reformers are slick. They want all the education money and that means special education too. They move in carefully calculated sequenced steps predetermined by their hired think tanks. These standardized tests are but a trivial mini step to the big pay-off for the reformers, of that I am convinced. Just what that lucrative innovation for special education is, I am not sure…but I know something surely is around the bend. Whatever it is, it will be destined to be disastrous for the special ed children. If I know anything from working decades with these special kids, it is that nothing works better for special learners than daily interaction in consistent nurturing relationships built overtime with highly skilled familiar teachers. That kind of progress can’t be measured on standardized tests. And is I know anything about how reformers operate, that is the kind of expense reformers are just not willing to pay.
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Only 5% of special ed students in NY scored at the proficient level on the Pearson math and ELA tests.
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This makes it sound like we’re abusing Special Education students and not giving the tests that will truly identify their needs (and the teachers who failed them).
I can’t tell whether this was said out of ignorance, about targeting a more highly learning disabled group that gets alternate assessments, or as a political bash to to try to make it sound like we’re suppressing special education students (and still getting bad scores even with that).
None of the answers are good.
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“WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?”
Government officials who are close Friends of Corporate America, who salivate at the thought of getting their hands on the nearly $600 billion per year of tax payer funded public education monies, all of whom are masquerading as altruistic parties with no skin in the game. No skin my a**. Do we really need to wait until they are out of office and have high powered jobs lobbying for or working with their corporate sponsors, as demonstrated by Leibovich in This Town? http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-mark-leibovich-on-americas-gilded-capital/ I think not. That is happening in cities and states across America, not just in DC
Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel must have known this was in the works when he recently removed 520 Special Ed positions. Anything to starve schools of needed resources and ensure the lack of student success, to feed his cronies’ failing schools narrative and business plan to privatize public education..
This is so self-serving and against the common good any time, but truly sick when innocent children are involved.
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I was trying to find out more info about who these people are and why a Special Ed consortium would propose such nonsense. I found their letter here:
Click to access Letter-on-Student-Success-Act-from-CCD.pdf
It is signed by only three members of a Task Force, so I don’t know for sure if it’s representative of the entire consortium.
As a cross categorical Special Educator who has worked with children with disabilities across the spectrum, from mild to severe-profound, I still don’t understand it. I think they should have been asking for appropriate assessments, accommodations and modifications based on individual strengths and needs identified in student IEPs, rather than trying to standardize exceptional populations. It makes no sense to me. Maybe other educators can shed light on this
BTW, they also mentioned Teacher Quality and the inappropriate classification of out-of-field “teachers” (from TFA and similar programs) as “highly qualified” and their disproportionate placement in classes with high needs students, when in fact they are only teachers-in-training with very limited preparation and experience. While I agree on this matter, I think the issue was addressed much more eloquently in this letter to President Obama from many organizations involved in the National Oportuity to Learn campaign: http://www.otlcampaign.org/blog/2013/04/30/who-is-teaching-our-kids.
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I realize that few folks if any care, but to set the record straight: the line from BUTCH CASSIDY is “Who ARE these guys?” with the emphasis placed to indicate that Butch & Sundance can’t figure out how anyone could still be on their tail after all their usual efforts to ditch pursuers have failed.
The person most like to say “Who are these PEOPLE?” is Jerry Seinfeld, with the emphasis suggesting that he’s incredulous that there are any people who could be like “this,” whatever it is he’s talking about.
I think what we have here is . . . failure to communicate. Because the real point is likely that PEOPLE wouldn’t do what these monsters are trying to pull off. I’ve said this repeatedly in various forms and places: whenever I see a photo of Arne Duncan, I think, “Hmm, looks like THE WALKING DEAD has misplaced a cast member.”
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Is Arne on crack? Or maybe it’s just an 80 IQ. He does seem kinda dim.
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I was once heard a speech 7 years ago at a new teacher orientation By a NYC DOE administrator that by 2014 every student will have the skills to get a REGENTS diploma. I asked what about an Autistic adolescent with a 35 IQ? He said of course because he does not believe in IQ scores. He said, and I quote, “a really great teacher will LOOK THAT CHILD IN THE EYES and say you can do it.”
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And a really great teacher will look the cow in the eye and say, “Of course you can swim.” To think otherwise, in the immortal words of George Bush, Jr., is to indulge “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Repeat after me: “Children are products to be identically milled by our test prep factories.” Good job! Let’s all do the Great Grate.
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It is difficult to keep myself from crying or bursting into a rage as I think of all the grief these greed obsessed ideologues are causing. The child abuse is obvious. The repercussions involving moms and dads and other family members? The interrelationships among family members will be stretched and damaged whenever these mixed messages from educational authority figures make pronouncements. What can they all expect or believe in for that child and their roles within the family? Without fear of over-exaggeration, I can honestly say that these are crimes against humanity. As all the billions of dollars are being made by monetizing children, the wake of destruction left behind will be horrendous.
Shame on all those who realize what is being done yet continue to fuel the profits for the Education-Industrial Complex.
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They are indeed crimes against children. It’s time to bring in the lawyers and bring this down.
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One ring to rule them all! No exceptions! (Well, 1 percent)
Egads. Clearly, with friends like Easter Seals and The National Center for Learning Disabilities, special education students don’t need enemies.
KIDS DIFFER. That should be our starting point for thinking about how we should educate them. Assessment should serve mostly diagnostic and formative purposes. Such summative assessments that are created should be extraordinarily varied in content and form and scoring procedure, and they should also be narrowly focused on providing opportunities for students to demonstrate specific competencies instead of broad, vague, impossible-to-define operationally swaths of achievement like “reading ability” and “writing ability.” We need to root out of our educational system all those who have this pathological obsession with one-size-fits-all summative testing.
Our education policies are being formulated by people who can’t think in any manner except unidimensionally, a bunch of 2-D Flatlanders in a 3-D world.
How well I remember when the whole education establishment in the United States was obsessed by behavioral objectives, when the reformers were CERTAIN that implementing Behaviorist practices in classrooms was going to bring about some sort of renaissance in American education. Now, we look back on the folks who talked the Behaviorist babble as a bunch of benighted fools.
Mark my word, the same will be true when in the future we look back on these morons who are calling for one-size-fits-all standards in testing, as if that were the way to prepare kids who differ for lives in a highly diverse, pluralistic society that needs not identically trained do-bots but people whose diverse potentials were realized by their schooling.
We will look back on the current “reforms” in horror, anger, disgust, revulsion because we have seen all the damage that they caused.
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A thought. Since there seems to be an indifference to involving traditional educators in the development of the CC and the tests, is it safe to assume that standard measures of readability have been ignored?
Obviously, by shoving objectives to be measured into lower and lower grade levels, it seems to me that the disrespect for educational research and guidelines would be apparent in every area. With the decision to throw out years of traditional educational practice, upon what authority has this new level of rigor and content been based?
I suppose those in charge of these changes just sat in their ivory towers to design their educational utopia. But it doesn’t address the real world of teaching and learning. I just keep shaking my head.
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The Pearson assessments administered last spring left many of us here in NY with serious concerns regarding the readability issue. I’m convinced that one of the reasons that state ed won’t release the exams (in their entirety) is out of fear of objective analysis – and the outrage that would ensue. All teachers who scored exams had to sign waivers that forbid them from discussing the content. How trusting of them.
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In Ohio, we are required not to discuss questions on the OAA that is given each year. After questions are released, samples are online and those can be printed, discussed, and parents/students can access them.
I just have to wonder how Pearson or whoever is designing these tests with “rigor” have determined age/grade appropriateness. I know that when we were looking at recommended texts for 4th graders, we were shocked at the lexile levels of those texts. It is one thing to challenge the brightest and best readers with text that has traditionally been read by 8th graders, but it is absurd to assume that those who are “proficient at 4th grade level” would be able to read those same texts. Some would be at a loss as to how to pronounce many of the words, let alone put meaning behind the words. When I realized this, I knew it was time to “get out of Dodge”.
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Is it a case of incompetent test writing? or is it purposefully bad test writing? Our mantra should be: SHOW US THE TESTS!
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This utter lack of transparency should be a red flag. Do not judge these exams based on the few sample items released. They must be viewed in the entirety. SHOW US THE TESTS!
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@Paul. I have never really been a member of either party. I have always believed in doing what was/is right, not follow some ideology of the crowd. I have voted for third party candidates several times, but the truth is, it doesn’t do any good. It has no traction. Washington is “owned” by corporations and beholden legislators. Even the Supreme Court has sold out. Getting a third party to roll them out will not happen.
As far as standing up and fighting as a teacher. It isn’t permitted. We are forbidden from making statements that might make our district “look bad” (or that might reveal how we feel about testing, etc.). Why are we forced to do so? We don’t want to lose our jobs. Why? We don’t want to lose our homes. Also, the manner in which the changes are inserted is kind of our of our decision-making arena. We are told what to do. We are told that the changes are taking place to prepare our district to be “the Little Engine that Could” despite our lack of funding. And, we teachers work our fingers to the bones.
But, trying to stand up against something we abhor … or something that came upon us stealthily like a thief in the night … isn’t easy. When we are told, “stop complaining and do your jobs” … we have done so … in order to maintain our lives for a little while.
Is it selfish? :Probably. But with the job market so tight and with people carrying so much debt, it isn’t easy to “stand tall”.
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Funny you should mention behaviorist practices. We were required to write all IEP goals from a behavioral point of view so we could count right vs. wrong to determine mastery. That is fine in many instances when you want to target a very discrete piece of behavior, but it required breaking down more complex behavior into steps, to serve as surrogates for the behavior, that could be measured. Every time a student demonstrated mastery of one of these steps, the IEP needed to be updated. This task analysis procedure could really make the IEP an exercise that had little relation to what you wanted to accomplish in the classroom and how you wanted to do it, but it did create the data tables these guys thrive on. Keeping up with the paperwork was impossible.
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correction: “one-size-fits-all” standards AND testing
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I think of adherence to the belief that one can validly measure GENERAL “writing ability” and “reading ability” beyond the most rudimentary level by means of a single simple test as itself a sort of competency test for putative language arts education “experts.” Those who think this possible obviously haven’t thought very deeply about the matter. Clearly, a lot of folks in positions of authority in this country–our POTUS, our Secretary of Education, the authors of the new ELA standards, the leaders of our unions, Tom Harkin, and a murder of pundits and plutocrats, to name just a few–all fail this test. They get an F. Their cluelessness is matched only by their certainty.
Ignorance and arrogance is a toxic cocktail.
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Unfortunately, it’s the kids and teachers in this country who are going to have to drink it.
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In Being and Nothingness, Part II, Chapter 1, Jean-Paul Sartre speaks of “the education system” being an institution for “making children ashamed of what they are.” Duncan and his ilk seem intent on turning that bleak assessment into a prophecy.
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I just have to wonder upon what authority they have made their decisions. And, I wonder what the end results will be. What do they plan to “do with” those who don’t “measure up” to the impossible? Students, teachers, schools, colleges, professors … all abandoned.
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“I just have to wonder upon what authority they have made their decisions.”
Because they could.
Now that David Coleman is the new president of the College Board, he has promised to extrapolate his brand of madness into the SATs and ACTs.
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By “authority” I meant, educational not legal authority. I just feel like they’ve tossed the entire body of educational research into the toilet and replaced it with “business-speak” terminology and decisions based on NOTHING sound. I have to pinch myself to see if this is really happening. No I am not dreaming … unfortunately.
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Agreed. Technically though we’re not dreaming – we’re in the middle of a nightmare.
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Ultimately, the politicians derive their authority from you, the teachers. When you sit back and wonder if they can require this testing…then you give them the authority to “require” it. It is time to walk out of the classroom…not as teachers unions…but as individual human beings and say “We’re not going to let our government abuse the most vulnerable among us.” If it means giving up pensions, healthcare insurance and the like…then so be it. The good news is that we now know that both the Republican and Democratic parties are really the same thing. The only way to stop this madness is to vote for a third party…one that represents the people, not the corporate interests.
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I wish I could figure out how to respond to some people’s posts. I will go up to the last “reply” and then write a response, but it shows up under a different post than I intended. It makes it very confusing. I also wish there could be an editing feature so that when a typo occurs, it could be corrected. When one responds on a smart phone or kindle, “auto-error” shows up frequently.
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If indeed they receive and understand the same “standardized” information in their studies and class work it would be SOMEWHAT ok. I say somewhat because even standardizing of the test would still need to meet special needs such as braille, large print, and interpreters as needed (just to name a few).
Standardized would and should be FAIR for all.
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“In the immortal words of Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid:
‘WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?'”
What is the name of the book — it concerns slavery — where a character finds a girl’s braid in the bottom of a rowboat, which has clearly been ripped out of her head (I think it has traces of blood and skin on it), and says: “What are these people? What ARE they?”
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DO NO HARM!!!!!! ONE SIZE FITS ALL IS INSANE AND BRUTAL AND HAS NO PLACE IN OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM! We have years of research and science, programs and special education professionals who are trained to identify the learning disabled and to adjust and accommodate to their various learning styles for classroom and test taking.
Throwing them into testing as if none of this exists is child abuse pure and simple. There are Federal Mandates that are supposed to protect them. A LEVEL education learning field for them has needs and requirements that the average learner does not need. Therefore, the average and gifted students come ready for learning and test taking without the additional supports, services, programs, and accommodations. You don’t wish those things away, deny them, ignore them, and magically make the disabled ready for tests as if they are everyone else. They are not!!!!!!
After thirty five plus years as an advocate for the disabled we find the intent for a level education learning field for disabled learners slipping back to the push through dropout era. Inclusion before readiness has helped to further this along. The mildly learning disabled are not being identified and therefore are left to drown in classrooms unprepared for their various types of learning disabilities (one hundred fifty plus). The frustration levels for these drowning students often lead to a formula of LD=ED=JD=Jail (there is skill training and work in prison manufactoring). The current education reforms are sorting more quickly the needed global workforce and there appears no patience for those that mature slower and require additional help and finances. If they are not considered the value added learners they are going to be discarded and futures for millions will be derailed.
I am ashamed that our country has bowed to the corporate mindset that regards these children, these human beings as not giving a return on the dollar and therefore not
worth the price of their education. We almost lived up to the promise of being the kind of nation that concerned itself with the education welfare of all of our children but that only lasted for a short time. Follow the money and you will find the answers. Unraveling our national school system by making the disabled both the victims and culprits for making the schools look failed through test scores is a sorry nasty trick on all for the sake of privitizing to find the value added workforce and further get wealthy by eating the taxpayer education funding pie. We can now apply PTS to children who gain nothing from being tested (how does it help them?) but are victimized both heart and soul for their memories of school days. You can not shame the shameless and both government and corporate are shameless on the testing of our children. There should be a collective
standdown in administering these tests by all those who profess to not wanting to be a part of this massive socially engineered travesty!!
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Dr. Martin Luther King showed us how to stand up for what is right. He gave his life for it. I’d like to see teachers give their jobs up, walk out and say enough is enough.
When are we going to rally…when will we walk out of the schools…when are we going to take the education of our youth back? The government serves the people…NOT the other way around.
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AMEN!!!
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I’ll just give my sped kids the answers. I’m done!
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