Op-ed: Exit exams benefit students with disabilities
August 7th, 2008Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Lance T. Izumi refutes arguments made by San Francisco school officials that it’s unfair to require students with disabilities to pass the California exit exam in order to graduate.
California’s exit exam sets the bar extremely low, and consequently many students with special needs have a good chance to pass it, Izumi writes. This is a good thing, he says, because it encourages schools to work harder at educating students with disabilities.
If students with special needs were exempted from the exams, schools might be tempted to artificially inflate their exam passage rates by dumping low-performing students in special ed classrooms. Writes Izumi:
A positive agenda focused on getting special ed students to pass the exit exam will, in most cases, help these young people succeed in life much more than compassionate defeatism.
Izumi is senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
Our RSS Feed
September 1st, 2008 at 9:06 am
Do the homework on exit-exam fairness.
In his Open Forum piece “Exit exam can help special-ed students succeed” (August 4th) Lance Izumi stated: “Many members of the San Francisco school district’s special ed advisory council also oppose the testing requirement due to perceived unfairness. While understandable, this appealing knee-jerk reaction is seriously flawed.”
Izumi never spoke with anyone on our committee (which is called The Community Advisory Committee For Special Education or CAC-SPED), perhaps he’s “guessing” what we think? The majority of our committee’s members are parents of children with disabilities and there is nothing “knee-jerk” about our reactions to the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE).
Linda Tung, a CAC member states: “Mr. Izumi is implying that to object to the exit exam is to have low expectations of special ed students. I think it’s the reverse. The low expectations of special ed students are why “they” are not able to pass it. If school districts’ expectations of special ed students were higher, more assistance would be given to them to help them with the curriculum and testing.”
Izumi wrote: “A little more than half of special ed students pass the exam,” but many students enrolled in special education do not even take the CAHSEE.
Roughly 10 percent of students in California public schools receive special education services. There are thirteen main disability categories ranging from severe cognitive disabilities to dyslexia. Lumping all special education students together into one group and using a single test to determine their eligibility for graduating does not make sense.
Mandating that special education students take the test will not somehow magically make them pass the test. Until these students have the supports and highly qualified teachers promised to them under I.D.E.A., requiring that they pass the CAHSEE to graduate is neither fair nor realistic.
KATY FRANKLIN
San Francisco
This response can also be seen as a letter to the editor published in the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://tinyurl.com/5sh39x