Principals group releases report on revising IDEA

By Mark W. Sherman

Congress is so preoccupied with other mat­ters that any attempt to reauthorize the IDEA will have to wait until after the 2010 midterm elections, most observers say.

But on Tuesday, the National Association of Secondary School Principals got the IDEA debate going by releasing a task force report during a Capitol Hill briefing.

Among other things, students with disabili­ties should be assessed at their instructional rather than their grade level, the group said.

“A student’s IEP team is in the best position to know a student’s individual abilities as well as which assessments will accurately demonstrate that student’s individual growth toward meeting state standards and benchmarks,” it said. “Dis­tricts should be allowed to assemble both formal and informal evaluations into a comprehensive portfolio.”

Evaluating students this way would match the way teachers actually work these days, ac­cording to task force member Stephen Morton, head of Norfolk (Neb.) Senior High School.

“We believe that differentiated instruction means differentiated assessments,” he said at the briefing. “We’re in the student growth busi­ness — we’re not in the scores business.”

During the presentation and in a question-and-answer session afterwards, several people talked about the futility of asking students to take tests they know they cannot pass and of the humiliation that entails, sometimes accompanied by outbursts from students.

“I think it is inhumane,” one woman said.

Waiting for new tests

In theory, there are two alternatives for stu­dents with disabilities, when it comes to taking state assessments.

First, students with significant cognitive dis­abilities can take an alternate test, called the 1 percent test.

The name refers to the fact that no more than 1 percent of all students can be counted as having gotten a proficient score on the basis of such tests when calculating a school’s ability to make AYP. There is no limit on the number of students who can take them, however.

In 2007, the Education Department autho­rized another alternate test for students who are not in the “significant cognitive” category but “whose disability has precluded them from achieving grade-level proficiency and whose progress is such that they will not reach grade-level achievement standards in the same time frame as other students.”

The limit on the proportion of students who can be counted as having gotten a proficient score on the basis of these tests is 2 percent. So far, however, only Texas has been approved to use such a test, according to a brief interview with OSEP Research Director Larry Wexler, who attended the event.

Looking for qualified staff

NASSP made several other recommenda­tions for reauthorizing the IDEA in its re­port. For example, students with IEPs should have transition plans in place by the time they reach eighth grade or turn 14, the group said. The deadline used to be age 14 but was changed to age 16 when the IDEA was amend­ed in 2004.

The group also wants what it calls a “com­mon set descriptors for exceptionalities and common assessments for each of the exceptionalities enumerated in the IDEA.”

The result would be a special ed equivalent to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Morton said.

Most important, something must be done to fill the chronic shortage of special ed teachers and related personnel, the group said.

“Some states and districts are successfully recruiting and retaining highly qualified spe­cial education teachers by offering targeted salary increases for hard-to-recruit positions, bonuses for critical subject-area shortages, housing incentives, tax credits, and loan for­giveness,” it said.