Perhaps the biggest issue special education is facing right now isn’t anything all that new—and isn’t even a special education law. It’s the fact that individual states are receiving waivers to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the decade-old federal statute aimed at helping low-income students.
NCLB has become critically important to special education programs, and the new waivers being granted by the Obama administration could have enormous implications for students with disabilities.
Special education advocates are cautiously watching to see if the waivers retain the positive parts of NCLB (attention to special education subgroups within schools and accountability for test scores, mainly) while getting rid of the controversial parts (such as labeling schools as failures based on one group of students).
“Whether the waiver process is done in a way that is supportive of keeping people’s attention on the performance of kids with disabilities or not—that’s the big question,” says Tom Hehir, former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs and now a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Enacted in 2002, NCLB requires that all but the most severely disabled students be tested annually in reading and math and that their scores be reported for each school by grade level and by individual subgroup (including special education, low-income, minority groups, and English language learners [ELLs]). Schools are then rated based on both the performance of each grade level (e.g., third grade reading) —and individual subgroup (third grade reading scores of African American students).
Though complicated and abstract, these reporting and rating mechanisms have proven to be powerful devices for improving the quality of services for students with disabilities, say many advocates and administrators. Ten years ago, only half of the students with disabilities graduated from high school and 40 percent dropped out, according to a report from the National Longitudinal Transition Study–2. Now nearly 70 percent of students with disabilities obtain a high school diploma and only 20 percent drop out.
Before NCLB, many principals and administrators didn’t believe that kids with disabilities could be helped in general education classrooms or take regular annual assessments, according to Laura Kaloi, public policy director at the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). “Then, when they started doing it, kids that they never imagined could meet the bar were rising to it,” she says.
The extra scrutiny was also useful to districts that were already giving substantial attention to the needs of students with disabilities before NCLB was enacted. “We are teaching academics to students with multiple behavioral and cognitive disabilities,” says Jane Rhyne, assistant superintendent of Programs for Exceptional Children for the Charlotte-Mecklenberg, N.C., school system, which is considered a national leader in special education. “These are students who we thought would never, ever ‘move’ in reading, but now we’ve had to go back and write more curriculum because the students have already gone through everything we had.” North Carolina is among the states that have applied for waivers.
At the same time, however, special education advocates and educators have also been critical of NCLB for its focus on absolute achievement levels rather than academic growth (or progress) and for its system of identifying entire schools as “in need of improvement” because of low performance by just one subgroup of students.
“I think that to label a school underperforming when it’s only special education students is a misrepresentation,” says Paul Zinni, who oversees special education in the Avon, Mass., school district.
Heading into the fall of 2011, special educators found themselves hoping for some constructive changes to NCLB while at the same time crossing their fingers that the special education subgroup and other key reporting elements would remain. A full reauthorization of NCLB fell through, but the Obama administration came up with the waiver option. At first, advocates were pleased with what they saw. Waivers allowed schools to be rated based on student progress rather than absolute achievement levels. NCLB’s “100 percent proficient” requirements and the much-loathed “adequate yearly progress” system were gone. And poor performance of a single subgroup of students would no longer be the sole factor in determining whether a school was considered in need of improvement.
NCLB has become critically important to special education programs, and the new waivers being granted by the Obama administration could have enormous implications for students with disabilities.
Special education advocates are cautiously watching to see if the waivers retain the positive parts of NCLB (attention to special education subgroups within schools and accountability for test scores, mainly) while getting rid of the controversial parts (such as labeling schools as failures based on one group of students).
“Whether the waiver process is done in a way that is supportive of keeping people’s attention on the performance of kids with disabilities or not—that’s the big question,” says Tom Hehir, former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs and now a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Enacted in 2002, NCLB requires that all but the most severely disabled students be tested annually in reading and math and that their scores be reported for each school by grade level and by individual subgroup (including special education, low-income, minority groups, and English language learners [ELLs]). Schools are then rated based on both the performance of each grade level (e.g., third grade reading) —and individual subgroup (third grade reading scores of African American students).
Though complicated and abstract, these reporting and rating mechanisms have proven to be powerful devices for improving the quality of services for students with disabilities, say many advocates and administrators. Ten years ago, only half of the students with disabilities graduated from high school and 40 percent dropped out, according to a report from the National Longitudinal Transition Study–2. Now nearly 70 percent of students with disabilities obtain a high school diploma and only 20 percent drop out.
Before NCLB, many principals and administrators didn’t believe that kids with disabilities could be helped in general education classrooms or take regular annual assessments, according to Laura Kaloi, public policy director at the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). “Then, when they started doing it, kids that they never imagined could meet the bar were rising to it,” she says.
The extra scrutiny was also useful to districts that were already giving substantial attention to the needs of students with disabilities before NCLB was enacted. “We are teaching academics to students with multiple behavioral and cognitive disabilities,” says Jane Rhyne, assistant superintendent of Programs for Exceptional Children for the Charlotte-Mecklenberg, N.C., school system, which is considered a national leader in special education. “These are students who we thought would never, ever ‘move’ in reading, but now we’ve had to go back and write more curriculum because the students have already gone through everything we had.” North Carolina is among the states that have applied for waivers.
At the same time, however, special education advocates and educators have also been critical of NCLB for its focus on absolute achievement levels rather than academic growth (or progress) and for its system of identifying entire schools as “in need of improvement” because of low performance by just one subgroup of students.
“I think that to label a school underperforming when it’s only special education students is a misrepresentation,” says Paul Zinni, who oversees special education in the Avon, Mass., school district.
Heading into the fall of 2011, special educators found themselves hoping for some constructive changes to NCLB while at the same time crossing their fingers that the special education subgroup and other key reporting elements would remain. A full reauthorization of NCLB fell through, but the Obama administration came up with the waiver option. At first, advocates were pleased with what they saw. Waivers allowed schools to be rated based on student progress rather than absolute achievement levels. NCLB’s “100 percent proficient” requirements and the much-loathed “adequate yearly progress” system were gone. And poor performance of a single subgroup of students would no longer be the sole factor in determining whether a school was considered in need of improvement.
These positive feelings didn’t last long, however. Nine of the first 11 states that applied for waivers proposed creating a “super subgroup” that would allow schools to report aggregated results. Some states, like Massachusetts, proposed putting low-income, ELL, and special education students together into one group. Other states, like Kentucky, wanted to group poor, ELL, disabled, and minority students together. Peer reviewers hired by the Department of Education to look over the applications found that state plans were generally weak in spelling out how schools would address the needs of students with disabilities and what districts and states would do in cases where they failed.
In announcing the first round of waivers in February, President Obama declared, “We want high standards, and we’ll give you flexibility in return.” But would the waivers really work for students with disabilities? Under the states’ proposed super subgroup setup, students with disabilities would still be reported but wouldn’t determine a school’s rating or whether it warranted intervention. For all but the lowest-performing schools, the focus would shift to district improvement efforts. Special education students would no longer count as much as they had in the past.
The Education Trust’s examination of the Colorado waiver projected that the performance of low-income students, students of color, ELLs, and students with disabilities will count for about a quarter of a school’s success or failure on annual ratings, which means high overall performance could mask low performance by certain subgroups.
Rodney Estvan, of the Chicago nonprofit advocacy organization Access Living, worries that regrouping NCLB subgroups into “one big pot” will result in less attention paid to the needs of students with disabilities. The Illinois waiver plan to have 71 percent of disabled students meet or exceed state reading standards by 2017 “is as unlikely to be met as was the 100 percent proficiency goal established by NCLB,” he says.
Despite these potential drawbacks, some advocates think that special education students will benefit over all. Education Trust vice president Amy Wilkins believes that the waivers could have the overall result of revealing more information about special education and other kinds of students, some of which had been masked and gone unreported because of statistical limitations and privacy concerns. Not every school has 10 or more special education students per grade (the minimum many districts require to avoid undermining student privacy), so the super subgroups could allow for expanded reporting of scores.
The Obama administration is taking steps to reassure advocates while the final agreements get hammered out and states begin to implement the new requirements. In follow-up letters sent to the states approved for waivers, the Department of Education said it will focus on subgroup accountability in its monitoring and that states should retain subgroup “transparency” even if individual subgroups are no longer part of their school rating models. The White House also met with special education advocates and parents, hoping to allay their fears.
But there are larger concerns about the waiver process, according to Nancy Reder, deputy executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. “My concern from a state perspective is the cost involved of going down the path with the waiver,” says Reder. “Then when [NCLB] gets reauthorized, everyone will be having to switch gears and go in another direction.”
For now, at least, those fears seem to be going unheeded. All but 13 states have applied for NCLB waivers. And concern continues to mount. In a letter sent in late March to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, NCLD executive director James H. Wendorf expressed concern that the waivers might eliminate the attention and support children with special needs have gained from NCLB. He wrote, “Once again, students with disabilities could easily be subjected to exclusion.”
Alexander Russo is a freelance education writer who runs the blog "This Week In Education."
In announcing the first round of waivers in February, President Obama declared, “We want high standards, and we’ll give you flexibility in return.” But would the waivers really work for students with disabilities? Under the states’ proposed super subgroup setup, students with disabilities would still be reported but wouldn’t determine a school’s rating or whether it warranted intervention. For all but the lowest-performing schools, the focus would shift to district improvement efforts. Special education students would no longer count as much as they had in the past.
The Education Trust’s examination of the Colorado waiver projected that the performance of low-income students, students of color, ELLs, and students with disabilities will count for about a quarter of a school’s success or failure on annual ratings, which means high overall performance could mask low performance by certain subgroups.
Rodney Estvan, of the Chicago nonprofit advocacy organization Access Living, worries that regrouping NCLB subgroups into “one big pot” will result in less attention paid to the needs of students with disabilities. The Illinois waiver plan to have 71 percent of disabled students meet or exceed state reading standards by 2017 “is as unlikely to be met as was the 100 percent proficiency goal established by NCLB,” he says.
Despite these potential drawbacks, some advocates think that special education students will benefit over all. Education Trust vice president Amy Wilkins believes that the waivers could have the overall result of revealing more information about special education and other kinds of students, some of which had been masked and gone unreported because of statistical limitations and privacy concerns. Not every school has 10 or more special education students per grade (the minimum many districts require to avoid undermining student privacy), so the super subgroups could allow for expanded reporting of scores.
The Obama administration is taking steps to reassure advocates while the final agreements get hammered out and states begin to implement the new requirements. In follow-up letters sent to the states approved for waivers, the Department of Education said it will focus on subgroup accountability in its monitoring and that states should retain subgroup “transparency” even if individual subgroups are no longer part of their school rating models. The White House also met with special education advocates and parents, hoping to allay their fears.
But there are larger concerns about the waiver process, according to Nancy Reder, deputy executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. “My concern from a state perspective is the cost involved of going down the path with the waiver,” says Reder. “Then when [NCLB] gets reauthorized, everyone will be having to switch gears and go in another direction.”
For now, at least, those fears seem to be going unheeded. All but 13 states have applied for NCLB waivers. And concern continues to mount. In a letter sent in late March to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, NCLD executive director James H. Wendorf expressed concern that the waivers might eliminate the attention and support children with special needs have gained from NCLB. He wrote, “Once again, students with disabilities could easily be subjected to exclusion.”
Alexander Russo is a freelance education writer who runs the blog "This Week In Education."
