Sorry, but I’m a parent of one of these children. Developmentally, he cannot work on the level of his regular ed peers. Period. Testing him on that level simply goes against his IEP and makes a mockery of special ed programs.

If a child’s IEP goals are to shoot for reading on a 5th grade level, then why would anyone give him a reading test for an average 8th grader and then accuse the school of failing? He can’t be there. Possibly ever.

Why bother meeting with IEP managers, SPED teachers, psychologists, and parents who come up with a plan based on a tremendous amount of testing and observation, file it with the state, and then ignore it when the state tests roll around?

Why not test the SPED kids on the goals stated in his IEP instead of having Special Ed teachers running around in a panic trying to figure out how to get their students to magically appear average? I mean, enough already.

One of my son’s teachers was in such a panic that she wrote on the board the day before the test an equivalent fraction, decimal, and percentage and told them that these were all the same thing. That was the extent of their fraction training. It was panic teaching at its worse.

I realize there are kids who are put in Special ed who are really not special ed kids, but your bottom 3% with IQ’s hovering around borderline simply cannot keep pace with their three-digit peers. They can certainly learn, but not as much and not as fast.

Special ed teachers are also subjected to all of the experimental curriculums that the regular ed teachers are, but the results can more than a waste of time; they can be disasterous.

No Child Left On the Bench
and
No Child Not Playing an Instrument

Because clearly if every child can “succeed” academically, then every child can “succeed” athletically and artistically – all it takes is more attention and money.

Where are you that biology is the state NCLB test?
I didn’t think that many states had science standards included yet.

All students who were were failing biology by the third quarter were withdrawn from that class. They were to take biology again in the summer. Okay…so what? Well, biology is our state’s NCLB beanchmark test and our county schools are judged by the student’s scores on that test. Kids withdrawn from biology DID NOT take the test at the end of the year.

Almost the entire SPED population were withdrawn in some of our high schools. Oh, and our school system is touting the raised scores.

In Georgia, I think the high school students can have the test read aloud and get extended time and small group settings, but beyond that, I think they get the exact same test in the same form as other students.

Here’s an example that I’ve heard: hearing impaired students will frequently have trouble compared to their hearing peers with Standard Written English because the syntax of sign language isn’t the same as SWE. So a regular education teacher who works with a hearing impaired student all year will make accommodations and modifications for the student in terms of drafts and revisions, etc. In theory, there’s no reason why a final draft of an essay would be different from a hearing peer.

But when a student takes the Georgia graduation test in writing, although the student can have extra time, ultimately the reader and grader of the writing sample submitted won’t know that the student is hearing impaired, so if the student hasn’t mastered the standard syntax on his or her own, he or she won’t pass. And even if he or she did pass, would it be reasonable to assume that he or she would do as well as student who used the syntax of SWE in their speech everyday all day?

(Now the writing test isn’t part of our NCLB testing, but it does determine whether students can get regular diplomas.)