Our Position


Students with disabilities must be included in state-wide testing such as the current DSPT and schools must be held accountable for their performance. Federal laws and regulations make this clear. For the most part, students with disabilities, and their schools, must be held to the same "challenging academic standards" as other children - although there are a small number of students described by DOE as "students with the most significant cognitive disabilities" and "students with persistent academic disabilities" that may be held to different standards.

The testing of students with disabilities is important on two levels. For the individual student, test results may be incorporated into IEP academic goals as an unambigous way to show student progress and identify areas that need extra help. On a national, state and district level, universal student testing shows what programs work better than others. Only through testing all students can we really know how well a particular reading program works for everyone. At a district and school level, the accountablity clause can generate additional funds for schools with poor test results. The advantages of this additional federal money, which is designed to provide extra help to the children who need it most, far out weigh any stigma associated with the schools that need the help. Even more importantly,

Supporting Rationale
To be able to understand how well any process is working today, much less improve it tomorrow, it is necessary to measure that process. This concept is the same for the widget assembly line, gas mileage or public education. The federal legislation known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), stresses this point: The only way to know if children are getting a good education is to test them. Testing is the cornerstone of NCLB. All students, including those with disabilities need to be tested. In fact, "students with disabilities" is one of the groups singled out by the NCLB legislation to be systematically and separately tracked for progress. The authors of NCLB were clear in their intent to make sure the progress of children with disabilities is tracked and that schools are held accountable for their success.  This concept was re-enforced when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was re-authorized in 2004.

Between the passing of NCLB and the re-authorization of IDEA, President Bush commissioned a report on Revitalizing Special Education as a way to collect expert opinion and build census on, among other things, how to improve IDEA based on the far reaching changes brought by NCLB. Shortly before the the passage of the revised IDEA 2004, the National Education Association and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, jointly issued IDEA and NCLB - The Intersection of Access and Outcomes. Both these documents make it very clear that the spirit and the letter of the federal law is that schools are required to teach and test students with disabilities in the same cirriculum as all other student sub groups tracked by NCLB: Males, Females, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians/Pacific Islanders, American Indian/Native Alaskan, students receiving free/reduced price lunch and students with limited english proficiency.

Today, some people may believe that it is not reasonable to hold students with disabilities to the same high academic standard as other students. Remember - even in America, most of the NCLB sub groups had been considered unable to meet high academic standards at some point in the last 100 years. In fact, the very reason these catagories were created was that many of these groups have historically been under served by the public education system - in part because of traditionally low expectations.

However, Federal law recognizes that there are some students whose disabilities may make it difficult or impossible to achieve at the same level of other students. These children are described by DOE as "students with the most significant cognitive disabilities" and "students with persistent academic disabilities". The former group,  "students with the most significant cognitive disabilities", was the first to be described in DOE Guidance and Federal Regulations. In general, there is about a 1% cap state-wide on the students who may be counted in this catagory. The second group, those "students with persistent academic disabilities" are described as "those students who are not likely to reach grade level achievement because of their disability in the same timeframe as students without disabilities, but who will make significant progress". No more than 2% of children state-wide can be in this catagory and count in the NCLB "proficient" catagory. The Federal DOE's Raising Achievement: Alternate Assessments for Students with Disabilities describes the derivation these these caps and how these percentages are based on scientific rationale. To avoid making this article overly complex, this combined group of students - 3% of the total student population - those held to a different academic standard,  will not be included in the discussion. For more information, see DOE's Alternate Achievement Standards guidance.

Who are students with disabilites we should be testing? According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 14.6% of Delaware's students in the Nation's Reprotcard study are considered to have a disability - based on their having an Individual Education Plan (IEP). A breakdown on the demographics of these children and the types of dissabilities they have on a national level is in the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The simple fact is that the natures of these children's disabilities do not prevent them from learning - although some may learn a little diffrently. They can learn to read; they can become productive members of society. Federal law is clear on this point. The "purpose" of IDEA - , as written in Part A, Sec 601 (D) is to "ensure all children with disabilities have available to them a free and appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living." Our Society cannot morally or financially afford to allow 15% of our people to miss out on an education.

Recent federal legislation like NCLB calls on using "scientific-based reasearch" of the type described in the document Identifying and Implemeting Educational Practices Supported by Rigorous Evidence to drive decisions to improve the education of all children.This kind of rigous scientific analysis requires accurate and detailed data as input to produce valid results and that data comes from comprehensive, inclusive student testing. If children with disabilites are going to benefit from new teaching methods, new ciricula and new programs, those children need to be included in and test on those programs.

Unfortunately, the current generation of tests have not been designed with disabled students in mind. Therefore, to get accurate results, some students with disabilities may need to be given alternative tests. However, these alternative tests are required to be "aligned with the state's challenging academic content standards and challenging student academic standards". Alternate tests aren't the long term answer because they perpetuate the archaic and misguided "separate but equal" approach that has been proven wrong over and over. Test designers are working on the next generation of tests using ideas like Universal Design that will create tests that accurately measure the achievement of every student. Since tests measure students' progress in the standard curriculum, the tests and curriculum will need to change together. Universal Design for Learning, is an approach to creating a curriculum that is flexible enough to apply to all students.

Today, and even after the next generation of disability-friendly tests are created, "accomodations" may be provided for to help ensure a child's ability is is tested rather than his/her disability. A simple example is having someone "sign" the test's spoken instructions to a student who has a hearing impairment. That is an example of extra help for a hearing impaired student that most people would consider reasonable and would not affect the accuracy of the test results.

supplemental services

Current tests, like Delaware's NCLB test, the DSPT and the NEAP test, used to produce the Nation's Reportcard, can adequately measure

testing accomodations

 what is an alternate test and that it must test the same academic standards State and District-wide Assessments short term solution to better tests as described Considerations for the Development and Review of Universally Designed Assessments discuss universal design for the cirrciculm too.

In order to achieve the promise of NCLB and IDEA, aggressive steps need to be taken in increase the number of students with disabilities participating in standardized testing in Delaware. By several measures, Delaware is one of the most backward states in the nation in this regard.

National Education Association, President's Commision on Excellence in Special Education, National Center on Educational Outcomes,