New York Wants To Give Special Education Kids Easier Tests Like 'The Old South,' Advocate Says
Should students with disabilities be held to the same academic standards and tests as other kids their age?
That decades-old question is being revived by a debate in New York. Some advocates charge that a proposed tweak to the state's No Child Left Behind update may shortchange vulnerable students -- and, if approved, could spread to other states. They want these kids tested alongside their peers, so that they won't fall behind as each grade passes them by. Others, though, say tougher testing for kids with disabilities can have its own detrimental effects.
New York Education Commissioner John King has proposed allowing up to 2 percent of the state's students with "severe disabilities ineligible for the alternate assessment" to be tested at their instructional ability -- not their chronological grade year -- up to two full grade levels below a student's current grade level. The tweak would, for example, allow an 8th grader with autism to be tested on exams written for sixth graders.
"When we take students and test them two levels below their enrolled grade and say