Archives for category: Special Education
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Achieve Official Refutes Statements About PARCC

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2013 //
18

In an earlier post, a teacher in Tennessee wrote critically about the PARCC assessments of the Common Core. The teacher said that the assessments did not permit accommodations for students with disabilities.

Chad Colby of Achieve, one of the organizations responsible for developing the Common Core, says that these claims are wrong.

He writes:

“The information presented in this post is factually incorrect.

“Students with disabilities will have access to accommodations on the PARCC assessment. A draft accommodations manual is currently out for public comment: http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-releases-draft-accommodations-manual-public-comment and we encourage parents and educators to review and give feedback.

“Also, IEP teams will still determine what accommodations students with disabilities should receive. It’s the law.

“From the Individuals with Disabilities Act Regulations:
http://idea.ed.gov/download/finalregulations.html

“In §300.320(a)(6), it states that the IEP must contain:
(6)(i) A statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and districtwide assessments consistent with §612(a)(16) of the Act”

Chad Colby – Achieve
(202) 419-1570
(202) 297-9437 cell

Categories Common Core, Special Education, Testing

High-Stakes Testing of Students in Special Education

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
46

Louise Marr sent this from her book:

**********£*******
“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 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.

Takierrah and Courtney were working on their tests, until Courtney looked up and caught Takierrah looking at her.

“Stop looking at me!”

“You’re ugly, I will f*** you up.” “I can’t stand your black ass.” “You’re black too!”

“No, I’m light-skinned.”

“You’re still ugly.”

“I’m cuter than you.”

“Get outta my face.”

“I’m not in your face, because if I was, I would f*** you up.”

They did manage to settle down without a physical confrontation,
but this scene made a huge impression on me. These tests would be used to evaluate the progress of our school. They were obviously way above the comprehension level of the Special Education students, yet the students were not given any accommodations at all. When I asked an administrator about this, she just shrugged, “That’s just the way it is.”

From the book, “Passed On: Public School Children in Failing American Schools”
by Louise Marr. Chapter 3: No Longer a Special Education

Categories Closing schools, Special Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

BREAKING NEWS: US to Milwaukee Voucher Schools: Stop Excluding Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
9

Responding to a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. Department of Justice warned voucher schools in Milwaukee to stop excluding, counseling out, or otherwise discriminating against students with disabilities.

“The state cannot, by delegating the education function to private voucher schools, place students beyond the reach of the federal laws that require Wisconsin to eliminate disability discrimination in its administration of public programs,” DOJ officials wrote in the letter to Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Tony Evers.

Voucher programs across the nation–now operating in 20 states–will be affected, and states are now obliged to monitor voucher programs to be sure they are in compliance with federal laws protecting the rights of students with disabilities.

The ACLU contended that the voucher program excluded students with disabilities, and if they were admitted, they were systematically expelled and/or pushed out. This practice led to a very large percentage of students with disabilities in the public school district even as its funding was declining due to loss of enrollment to vouchers and charters. Consequently, the so-called “failing” district cannot possibly recover because the private schools don’t accept students with disabilities and the public school has to accept all comers. And despite their exclusion of students with disabilities, the voucher schools in Wisconsin DO NOT outperform the public schools.

A statement issued by the ACLU warned of the danger of choice programs:

“Publicly-funded voucher programs have the effect of setting up a separate escape hatch for only a few, leaving the majority of the poor students in schools that are even less likely to succeed than they were before the voucher program or tax credit began. Furthermore, the private schools that spring up to educate a child for $6,500 are producing results that are no better than the public school district – in Milwaukee, for example, three years of comparison test scores show they are performing worse than the public system. We also know that the Milwaukee parents who take advantage of these programs tend to have higher education levels and children without disabilities, leaving the public school district with a higher percentage of children with disabilities and parents with less education. There are few checks in place to ensure that all of the schools accepting vouchers are more than glorified day care providing convenient hours for parents.”

Even more ominous is the specter of segregation academies in the south:

“…some private schools in states like Georgia and Alabama, where tax credits have recently been put into place, were founded as segregation academies to thwart federal integration efforts. While the program in Milwaukee and its school district serve almost entirely students of color, as “school choice” spreads around the country, the stage is set for these programs to become even more exclusionary and segregated. We know this because Milwaukee’s voucher program already excludes students with disabilities and segregates them into the public school district while at the same time stripping the district of much needed funds to educate them. If we permit this to continue, we are condoning separate schools for a number of groups of students, including racial minorities, students with disabilities, religious minorities and LGBT students. What we have known for the fifty years since Brown v. Board of Education is that separate is not equal. School voucher programs and tax credits do not provide a choice for everyone. They create publicly funded separate schools.”

Categories Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Special Education, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Teacher: I Hate What Is Happening to Our Schools

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2013 //
9

This comment from a teacher who read the post “For Shame, Commissioner King.” That post described how the state commissioner in New York requires special education students to take examinations they can’t read.

The teacher writes:

“I am often asked to proctor extended time testing on our all-too-frequent assessment days (quarterly interims, ACTs, PSAEs, practice for all of the above, etc.). I have been told it’s because I “get it” by our very talented, also very frustrated, special education team. By “get it,” they mean that, as a traditionally-certified teacher (in a charter network which favors TFAers) who attended an actual school of education, I have taken a few required classes on student learning differences and understand that not all kids can be lumped into a mediocre average and expected to achieve the same baseline level of understanding given “optimal input” and prison-like management. My husband works in mental health, so I am also inappropriately (illegally) consulted on student psychological issues far outside my job as a Latin teacher. It amazes me how clueless, or maybe worse, how careless, our schools have become with these students. Our school has an AMAZING special education team, yet they are ignored, forgotten about, and not consulted when it comes to the students they know best. Many have left or are leaving to take their talent elsewhere, and who could blame them?

“When I proctored my first extended time interim (a totally unnecessary in-network assessment incentivized by bonuses for both students and teachers whose scores compete with other schools in our network), I was shocked and appalled at what we do to our kids who already struggle to stay focused on one narrow task and sit still in their normal 45-minute class periods. We put them all in a room together, and make them sit still and silent for four hours. It was miserable for me, and I can only imagine how miserable it was for them. One student managed to pull a dollar bill out of his pocket, and studied it intently for a good 10 or 15 minutes during his math exam, no doubt running out of time when it came to actually completing the test. Knowing this student, I’m sure something in his exam inspired some spark of curiosity that he couldn’t ignore. This type of exploration might have been acknowledged positively, could have lent itself to a “teachable moment” to help students see some cross-curricular connections between printed money and history or culture (I’m going to pretend he was reading the Latin). But instead, I was expected to silently discipline the student after the test for not “focusing hard enough” on his pointless, soulless, disconnected interim exam.

“I hate where we are headed. I hate how little schools are allowed to appreciate real, connected learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. I hate to see brilliance stifled by enforced mediocrity. I feel so lucky to have attended schools before this wave of “reform,” but heartbroken for so many of my students who trust their futures to a system that is ultimately failing to help them reach their human potential, because being human is too messy, too hard to assign convenient numerical values to, and apparently undesirable to our policymakers and their corporate sponsors.”

Categories Special Education, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Her Daughter Opted Out

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2013 //
19

From a reader:

Libbie, my daughter with Rett Syndrome, could not talk or use her hands functionally to communicate, yet she was forced to go through the state testing every year. Her IEP “accommodations” forced her teacher to work with her 1 on 1, and ask each question so Libbie could eye-gaze at her chosen answer, as an “alternative assessment”. In 5th grade, she figured how to “opt-out” on her own. She would simply close her eyes and refuse to participate. Her teacher frantically called me to somehow remedy the situation, but I only smiled with pride at my silent daughter’s wise choice. She took a nap, rather than take a test.

Libbie passed away 3 years ago, due to complication from Rett. In my grief, I have become so angry at how much time she spent in school being tested, precious moments of her already difficult life completing meaningless tasks. I hate standardization of all children, especially our beautiful ones with special needs.

Categories Special Education, Testing

NCLB: The Creation of a Mad Dr. Frankenstein?

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2013 //
9

If you want to know how No Child Left Behind has injured our society’s most vulnerable children, read this heart-breaking story about the sanctions imposed on the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.

Written by a recently retired teacher at the school, it describes how the standardized testing regime struck the children and the school like a sledgehammer, causing it to be labeled Persistently Low Performing.

The story begins:

“I recently participated in the inspiring and informative webinar “How to Organize a Grassroots Group” put on by the Network for Public Education and the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education. I am a retired teacher of the deaf, having retired from the Rhode Island School for the Deaf in the fall of 2011 profoundly dismayed by the unreasonable sanctions placed on the school by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), headed by Deborah Gist (Broad Superintendents Academy 2008).”

Read this post and ask yourself how anyone associated with the punishments inflicted on this important school can sleep at night or look themselves in the mirror every morning without grimacing.

And the next time you hear a pundit or think tank jockey praise NCLB, tell them about the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.

Categories Closing schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Special Education

For Shame, Commissioner John King!

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2013 //
69

Peter DeWitt, an elementary school principal in upstate New York, tells a shocking story here.

New York requires students with disabilities to take grade level tests that are far beyond their ability. Some children who literally cannot read are expected to take the same tests as other students of their age.

What purpose does it serve to put these children through this ordeal?

I think of two ways to characterize this behavior on the part of officials: either “educational malpractice” or “child abuse.”

Here is Peter DeWitt’s account:

“Most Special Education Students Couldn’t Read the State ELA Exam

Our special education students had a major issue last week. They couldn’t read the 3rd-5th grade NY State ELA exams they were supposed to complete. The tests are written FAR above the level that most can understand. Our most proficient fifth grade special education students with a Lexile level of 400 had to take an exam with a Lexile level of 700.

Students sat with rigid fists, tears and frustration. Their teachers tried to alleviate their anxiety, although all of this frustration would end up with a 1 or a 2 at best. How couldn’t it? They couldn’t read the exam.

All of this could be equated to taking an exam in a foreign language they have never learned. It had vocabulary they have never seen. They couldn’t sound out the words, and could not ask for help from their teachers. Some of my students could not get past the second word on the 3rd grade exam, which was Tarantula. A few students put their pencils down and wouldn’t budge. Imagine what it must feel like to not be able to read the 2nd word on a 70 minute exam.

Accommodations That Lack Common Sense

Students are classified as special education for numerous reasons (i.e. OHI, LD, etc). Where assessments are concerned, states offer accommodations. In the logic of state education departments, there are students who qualify for time and ½ or double-time so they can take their time through each passage or question. In some cases students are allowed directions read, scribe or passages read. However, some of these accommodations were not allowed for students because the ELA exam is about what students comprehend, and allowing an adult to read it would not give the evaluators a true measure of what students comprehend.

In an interview for the School Administrators Association of N.Y. State (SAANYS) that I did with Commissioner John King, I asked about sending students in to take an exam that they cannot read. Dr. King replied that they require special education students to take on-grade level assessments so the state education department can, “Avoid the scenario where schools essentially are absolved from responsibility for a whole set of students.”

Unfortunately, this is another aspect to accountability. In an effort to make sure that schools do not hide low-performing students under a special education classification so they can boost overall test scores, schools are being forced to make sure that all students take on-grade level exams, even if they cannot read it.

It seems like educational malpractice to force students to sit down and try to take an exam that they cannot possibly read. These students, who in many cases suffer from low self-esteem because of their academic challenges, feel even worse when they sit down to take an exam they can’t read. So they sit there for two hours if they get time and ½ and over 3 hours if they receive double time. In some cases, these students have to eat lunch aside from their general education peers because they missed their original lunch due to their “accommodations.”

What’s worse, is that on the second day of the ELA exam there were two booklets, which had two sets of directions. Given that not all students will finish the first booklet at the same exact time, the directions for both booklets had to be read before both booklets could be completed. This requires students to remember directions for book two that were read 30 to 40 minutes prior to when they opened the booklet.

If you have ever spent time with students between the ages of 8 and 11 you understand that students cannot be read directions for two booklets and be expected to remember those directions 40 minutes later after they finish one section of an exam. We had students put their pencils down and sit there feeling defeated.

True Assessments

The truth is that our special education teachers are some of our most gifted assessors of student progress. They write IEP’s that reflect what a student knows and what a student needs to know the next year. They progress monitor weekly or bi-weekly to make sure their lessons meets the needs of the diverse learning that special education students have.

Special education teachers find value in assessing student progress. Whether it’s through formative assessment or summative assessment, special education teachers assess students with dignity.

The point is for them to use data to drive instruction, not to use it for accountability. In the words of Jonathan Cohen from the National School Climate Center, “Data is being used as a hammer and not as a flashlight,” and the state education department doesn’t seem to care about the social-emotional state of students as they use their hammer.

Categories New York, Special Education, Testing

Do Bobby Jindal and John White Hate The Poor and Disabled?

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2013 //
23

I read this post by Louisiana’s Crazy Crawfish with a sense of disbelief.

I could not believe that any human being would expend so much effort to crush the poorest and neediest citizens of his state.

Can you believe that John White is going to apply value-added assessments to determine the funding for students with disabilities? If they don’t get higher test scores every year, they lose funding. He will do the sameto gifted students.

Is this mean or mad?

Read Jindal’s spending cuts. Unbelievable. For example, he cut the budget for higher education by more than half. He proposed a tax plan to raise taxes on the poor (by raising the sales tax) while eliminating taxes on the rich (by eliminating the personal income tax and the corporate income tax). He closed most of the state’s mental hospitals and all of the charity hospitals.

Louisiana is rapidly retreating to the industrial era, where there were no protections for workers, no safety net for the needy. It may be 2013 in America, but it’s 1913 in Louisiana and the clock keeps moving backward.

Categories Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Special Education

Parents Debate How to Opt Out

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2013 //
34

This is part of an email conversation that I received. It is an exchange between two parents:

The first one writes:

“Hello Everyone!

“Well…it is that time of year again…TCAP testing. I really hate this time of year.

“As I have done for the past TEN years for all of my children, I opted my daughter out of the test. I sent my letter to the school district and of course, I am met with anger and tons of letters from the superintendent of Colorado schools saying that it is illegal for me to take my child out of this test. My daughter’s teachers are threatening her that she will be put in all remedial classes next year if she doesn’t take it and I am required to sign something that says I am aware of how wrong my actions are. Last year, my youngest daughter was met with such criticism and animosity that she begged me to take the test so people would leave her alone. Her teachers and the principal were so mean to her that she was afraid to go to school and afraid to not take the test. My youngest daughter has an anxiety disorder which comes with terrible panic attacks. The children are under so much pressure to do well on this test that she is up puking and crying before every testing day. I am so excited to do that again this year. :0(

“My question to all of you is….do you all have to deal with this? Does the admin at the schools that your children attend give you a hard time over this? The people at my kids’ school make me feel like an uneducated ignorant horrible parent. I’m just getting so tired of it and wondered if anyone out there feels the same.”

“Thanks for listening,”

Here is one of the answers she received:

“First of all, I wouldn’t sign a damn thing for that school.

“Secondly, if your child has an anxiety disorder then your child qualifies for a 504 since she has a ‘hidden disability’ under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ask your child’s therapist and/or pediatrician for medical documentation recommending she not be tested. This is what I have established for my kids and it is written into the 504 they are NOT taking TCAP or any other standardized district, state or national test.

“The school doesn’t bother me.

“Then, I would take my husband, brother or big burly male neighbor with me and tell the principal that if one more person at the school threatens my child you are going to sue and follow that up with a call to the district. Talk to the teachers at conferences and tell them the same thing. Tell them you will sue them individually; it’s child abuse.

“Next, those jerks have to leave school sometime; be waiting for them off school grounds. I saw my son’s ex-principal in Barnes and Noble and she couldn’t get out of that store fast enough when she saw me coming. She knew I’d make a scene and I would have.

“Lastly, tell your story of child abuse to the media and tell the principal and superintendent you’re doing it. Tell the principal and superintendent you’re going to picket outside the school and hand out leaflets telling parents how to refuse testing. Intimidation works both ways.”

Categories Parents, Special Education, Testing

Why Not Vouchers for Special Education Students?

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2013 //
20

One of the model laws promoted by ALEC creates vouchers for students with disabilities.

ALEC is the far-right group that brings together big corporations and very conservative state legislators to figure out strategies to advance privatization and protect corporate interests. ALEC does not like public education, does not like regulation, does not like unions, and does not like teacher professionalism. It likes vouchers, charters, online learning, all as unregulated as possible, and teachers who can enter the classroom with little or no certification or training.

ALEC pushes vouchers for students with disabilities as a way of establishing the legitimacy of vouchers, using the most vulnerable children as the poster children for their favorite anti-regulation, anti-government ideas. Once vouchers get a start in one sector, they reason, it is easy to make a case for vouchers for all. As states are slowly discovering, the more charters and  vouchers schools there are, the more difficult it is to supervise what happens in them or where the money goes.

Florida has a voucher program for students with disabilities. It is a sham. Florida journalist called it “a cottage industry of fraud and chaos.” Gus Garcia-Roberts won the Sigma Delta Chi award for public service journalism–one of the highest honors of the profession– for this series about the abuse and neglect of students with disabilities who receive vouchers in Florida.

Categories ALEC, Florida, Special Education, Vouchers
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