The Special Ed Dilemma

The Chicago Tribune ponders how special ed students should be assessed under NCLB. According to a state report card issued this week, nearly a third of the Illinois schools that failed to make AYP this year — nearly 300 schools – failed solely because of special ed students’ scores.

There’s a microcosm of NCLB issues in the article: the overemphasis on test preparation for these kids, the practicality of holding special ed students to the same proficiency levels as other students, the problems with flunking an otherwise okay school on one subgroup’s scores, the need to assess special ed students’ progress (but maybe just not in this way), the unfair advantage small schools enjoy in subgroup exemptions. 

All of this boils down to comparisons – among groups of students within schools, among schools in a state, among states in a nation. Can we really have a “report card” for parents (read: taxpayers) when this isn’t exactly apples-to-apples?

Most of all, the article demonstrates the punitive, blaming focus of NCLB.

Or, as the Tribune says, “[I]t leaves administrators with a dilemma: They don’t want to appear to blame their special education students for causing the school to fail, but they also have to explain to parents why their school didn’t meet the bar.”

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