From the Los Angeles Times’ ‘Blowback’ segment:

High school special education teacher Dennis Blass says it’s not fair that kids with disabilities should be required to make the same scores on state exit exams as everyone else.

What I have found … is that a majority of my special-needs students who fail the exit exam (and that is a majority of my caseload in many years) do so by only 20 to 30 points. Students must score at least 350 points on both the language arts and mathematics portions of the exam to pass; many of my students score between 320 and 330 on these sections.

… The state Department of Education need only investigate the average exit exam score within the learning-disabled community and allow that to become the passing score for special-needs students, so long as the average score isn’t too low. Under such a system, special-needs students would still be accountable for their learning, would not receive a “free pass” and, most important, would be given a real chance to earn their diplomas.

See earlier post here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 8:48 am and is filed under commentary, graduation, 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.