From the San Francisco Chronicle:

California’s budget deal includes a provision to overturn a two-year-old policy that requires students with disabilities to pass the state exit exam for graduation. Gov. Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the pact.

State education officials are still sifting through the agreement to figure out how the new policy would apply to the potentially tens of thousands of students with disabilities who were denied their diplomas over the past two years.

Critics of the exam said the new legislation was the right course of action, albeit belated.

The exit exam “has been an unmitigated disaster for thousands of children with disabilities,” said Sid Wolinsky, Disability Rights Advocates’ director of litigation. “They’ve earned (a diploma) by every possible measure except this one-size-fits-all standardized exam.”

Wolinsky’s organization says 16,000 disabled students fail to pass the exit exam each year. Many of them met all other requirements for graduation.

Earlier posts here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under budget, education, graduation, special education, standardized testing. 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.