Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for January 4, 2008 SPECIAL EDUCATION & EXIT EXAMS

It will be interesting to see what the lawyers come up with...

NCLB manadated that special education students would "meet or exceed", just like everybody else...but then they blinked.

California said everybody will pass the same test to graduate from high school...at the behest of a business community that wants competent workers, but granted a two-year exception...which runs out this year.

So, what's a district to do?

If they fear getting sued, maybe they need to give special education students a pass...a 60!

What do you think?

Exit exam disability guidelines up in air

By Laurel Rosenhall - lrosenhall@sacbee.com

State education officials and lawyers representing students with disabilities are negotiating over one of the toughest questions California has faced in creating a high school exit exam: how the requirement should apply to students in special education.

Those students have been allowed to graduate from high school even if they failed the graduation test that other students have been required to pass since 2006.

But the special ed exemption is scheduled to end this year. Without a legal settlement or a change in state policy, special ed students in the classes of 2008 and beyond will be required to pass the math and English test to earn a diploma.

Advocates for the disabled – who managed to stave off the test's consequences for them for two years – say it's an unfair requirement for kids who live with conditions including mental retardation, autism, deafness and learning disabilities. Many are in classes that don't teach the 10th grade-level English and eighth grade-level math that's tested on the exam.

That's true for Natalie Ayala, a junior at Mira Loma High School. The 16-year-old with a long ponytail and dark eyes was diagnosed with a developmental delay when she was 1 1/2 years old. Ayala now reads and does math at about a fourth- to fifth-grade level, according to her mother and teacher.

She's failed the California High School Exit Exam twice even though she's allowed special accommodations such as extra time and having the questions read aloud. She'll get another try this spring, and three more chances her senior year.

Ayala says the test is confusing and stressful. The math section is full of word problems, which she skips in her math classes at school. The English section requires students to write a persuasive essay, while her English classes at school involve simple grammar exercises.

"Too much stuff on it that I don't even know, that I haven't been taught," Ayala said of the test.

Yet the exit exam is the only thing keeping Ayala from getting a high school diploma, which she needs to be admitted to a Florida college for students with learning disabilities. Other special ed students say they need diplomas to get into vocational training programs or to land any job that pays more than minimum wage.

Ayala gets A's in her special ed classes, where her performance is judged on goals that take into account her abilities and limitations. For example, a special ed goal might be to advance from the fifth-grade level to the sixth-grade level in reading, or to write a two-paragraph composition using correct grammar 75 percent of the time.

"She's done all of her work. She's performed to the best of her ability – her grades show it," said Ayala's mother, Natalie Conrad. "She's just doing the best she can with what she was given, and that deserves a diploma."

The question of whether and how to accommodate students with disabilities reflects a fundamental clash between the education policies California is pushing now and the prior standards the state set for high school graduation.

Not too long ago, students earned a diploma simply by attending school for 12 years and passing their classes. Then, under pressure from business leaders who said too many graduates lacked basic math and English skills, California began to make graduation requirements more rigorous. The exit exam is the cornerstone of the effort to shift the diploma's meaning.

"I want students to have skills to be successful in the workplace. And I want the high school diploma to mean something, and not just be a certificate of seat time," said state Superintendent Jack O'Connell, who created the exam as a legislator and has backed it as the head of California's public school system.

Creating too much flexibility for kids in special education would weaken the state's efforts to raise the graduation bar, he said.

"Do you want a system that grants a diploma to a student that can't obtain a sixth-grade level?"

Advocates for kids in special education say the issue isn't so black and white. Lawyers with Disability Rights Advocates have argued that it's unfair for the state to demand students like Ayala pass the test when they haven't learned the material, or have disabilities that make a multiple-choice test impossible.

They reached temporary settlements in their class-action lawsuit, Kidd v. California Department of Education, that resulted in the two-year delay. But with special education students facing the consequences of failing the exam this year, attorneys are revisiting the suit.

Lawyers for the students and officials with the Department of Education confirmed they are in settlement negotiations, but neither would share many details about what they are discussing.

"We're optimistic that this would really help students in the class of '08 and in future classes," said attorney Roger Heller, of Disability Rights Advocates.

Advocates have said special ed students should be judged on criteria other than the test – criteria such as grades, attendance, participation in remedial classes or how many times they tried to pass the exam.

They've also suggested students with disabilities be allowed to submit a portfolio of school work in place of the test. And they've said the state should test special ed students on smaller sections of the exam, right after they learn the material, and allow them to retake only the part they fail, not the whole test.

The state Board of Education rejected those options in May.

Twenty-six states now have exit exams, and the question of how to accommodate special education students has been a struggle in all of them, said Jack Jennings, who studies exit exams nationwide as president of the Center on Education Policy.

In his view, Massachusetts and New York have come up with some of the best solutions. In Massachusetts, students with disabilities can submit an annual portfolio of work instead of taking the exam. And in New York, special ed students can take a different exam, geared for people with disabilities, and still earn a diploma. If they don't pass that, they can get a special diploma showing they met the requirements of their individual education plans.