Under a new federal accountability system, Maryland is no longer in compliance with the rules governing special-education students because the state's schools exempt a high percentage of students from national testing.
The announcement this week by federal education officials means Maryland will have to pressure local school systems to include more students in the National Assessment of Educational Testing, a national test in math and reading that is given every two years. Thirty other states and the District of Columbia were also found out of compliance for a variety of reasons.
Maryland's most recent scores on the national reading test were inflated because the state's schools excluded 66 percent of fourth-graders with disabilities, a higher percentage than any other state. The national rate is 16 percent.
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2 comments:
How can a state legally inflate test scores? What good are the tests they give our kids anyway? Isn't it simply a way to get more money? Furthermore, what qualifies students as having a "disability"? Can ADHD qualify as a disability? If so, I'm afraid the numbers are much worse than they appear.
Go to this site for a listing of educational disabilities. The last sentence in this paragraph defines what makes it an educational disability:
"The IDEA’s disability terms and definitions guide how States in their own turn define disability and who is eligible for a free appropriate public education under special education law. The definitions of these specific disability terms from the IDEA regulations are shown beneath each term listed below. Note, in order to fully meet the definition (and eligibility for special education and related services) as a “child with a disability,” a child’s educational performance must be adversely affected due to the disability."
http://nichcy.org/disability/categories
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