The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Dangerously Irrelevant: ROTW: Assessing students with disabilities leads us to this report:

Education Sector: Analysis and Perspectives: Labeled: The Students Behind NCLB’s ‘Disabilities’ Designation

They talk about Specific Learning Disabilities as the largest group in Special Education. While they are certainly more likely than most categories of special education students to achieve grade level proficiency (speech with articulation being another), here is why I think, on the whole, they will not. By my state’s definition, you have to be below grade-level to qualify for services with and SLD, and once you are at grade level, you are usually exited from the program services, and will no longer be designated as a special education student for testing. That means that all students who are labeled SLD are at least two grade levels behind going into the system, and if they achieve proficiency they are out of the system.

Do you see a possibility for any of these students achieving grade level proficiency? The only way is if they are kept in the special education programs after they get to proficiency. There are good reasons to do this (it provides a safety net for the transition out of services), but if it is just to inflate the test scores for the school, that is not the best interest of the child?

In addition, the two deviations from the norm that students are judged on to qualify for services come from norm referenced tests (Woodcock Johnson is usually used here) which are not aligned to state standards, and in many ways are easier than the state tests. This means that students who qualify for SLD are not two-grade levels behind, but more like three below the state standards.