Editors at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel challenge the No Child Left Behind Law, saying its standards for students with disabilities are unfair and impractical. Milwaukee’s prestigious Rufus King High School school was cited last week for lack of adequate yearly academic progress among students with special needs.

… is it practical to suppose that all students with special needs can compete in reading and math with others who don’t have those needs?

Surely, the term “special needs” exists for a reason. If King is under serving these students, the district must deal with that. But if the measure for determining this depends on students with learning disabilities scoring on par with students without these needs, this is too high a bar.

By all means, have standards for special needs children. But make them fair. On this score, NCLB unfairly punishes schools.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 4:57 pm and is filed under No Child Left Behind, commentary, education, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post