NEA: NCLB Testing for Students with Disabilities - National Education Association

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[Back to Introduction]

Assessing Students with Disabilities

Summary

On December 9, 2003, Secretary Paige issued final regulations under Title I of NCLB that provide some flexibility on how schools may test certain students with disabilities.

These regulations took effect on January 9, 2004. Each state now has the ability to define what is a "significant cognitive disability." Students who fit within that category may be given an alternate academic assessment based on alternate achievement standards.

Essentially this allows states to develop alternate standards for what students with "significant cognitive disabilities" should learn in reading and math. States then will develop alternate achievement tests based on the alternate achievement standards. Such alternate assessments could include out-of-grade level assessments.

The new regulations impose a 1 percent cap at the school district and state level (but not the school level) on how many proficient scores of students who take such alternate assessments based on alternate standards may be counted for purposes of measuring AYP.

Essentially, no more than 1 percent of all students (which equals about 9 percent of students with disabilities) can be considered proficient based on alternate standards.

For example, a school district with 1,000 total students might determine that 15 have significant cognitive disabilities. If all 15 take an alternate assessment and all score proficient, that results in 1.5 percent of students scoring proficient on such alternate tests.

Since no more than 1 percent of such scores may be counted, only 10 of those proficient scores count for AYP. The other 5 would be considered not proficient. The school district can request a waiver from the state, and the state can request a waiver from the Secretary of Education of the 1 percent cap.

NEA Concerns

While this regulation does provide some common sense acknowledgement that some students with cognitive disabilities will not be able to achieve at the proficient level on the same standards and assessments as other students, it limits the use of alternate achievement standards only to those students with "significant" cognitive disabilities.

There are many other students with cognitive disabilities who do not fit that category, but also are not functioning at the same level as other students. These students are often refereed to as the "gap kids". No flexibility is provided for these students, who will still have to be tested based on the same standards as other students.

Second, the 1 percent cap will prove problematic for many districts and some states. While waiver authority was provided, there is a significant amount of documentation that a state must provide to the Secretary to obtain a waiver.

Third, there is still an inherent conflict between IDEA and NCLB. IDEA provides an individualized education plan (IEP) for each student with disabilities, and the IEP determines what the academic goals are for that student and how the attainment of such goals will be measured. NCLB requires ALL students to take some type of standardized assessment and measures the group results.

Fourth, since the regulations took effect after almost all states had completed their AYP determinations for the 2002-03 school year, there are some unknown number of schools that failed AYP. If these schools had the option to be measured against the new more flexible rules, they might have made AYP. NEA has called for Secretary Paige to work with states to allow any such school to be re-evaluated to ensure it has not been inaccurately labeled.

The last problem is that many states do not currently have such alternate achievement standards and alternate assessment based on such standards.

Thus, as the next round of testing and AYP determinations start this Spring, it is likely that once again many schools will fail AYP due to the students with disabilities group, since the alternate assessments will not yet be available.

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