From the Kansas City Star:

Researchers at the University of Kansas have received a $22 million federal grant to develop more effective tools for assessing the academic progress of students with disabilities. The grant is the largest in the school’s history.

The goal of the work is to replace once-a-year assessment tests with mechanisms that can be integrated into everyday instruction. Kansas and ten other states have agreed to use the new assessment tools to measure progress for kids with disabilities starting in 2014.

But critics wonder: Who’s being served?

From the Washington Post:

Virginia schools are expanding the use of “portfolio” testing, once used only for students with serious cognitive disabilities. Now they’re being used for students with learning disabilities and those with emerging English language skills.

Many educators say the expensive portfolio method provides a surer way to measure kids’ achievement. Others are wary of their relatively high pass rates, which help educators reach academic benchmarks. “It benefits the state, not the child, to say they are at grade level when they are not,” said a mother of a student with disabilities.

From the New York Daily News:

Teachers at the prestigious Eagle Academy for Young Men in the Bronx have accused the principal of ordered them to inflate the grades of students with disabilities. They said they were instructed to change failing grades to passing for some students who hadn’t done any work and hadn’t attended class.

The New York Education Department is looking into the allegations.

Principal Osei Owusu-Afriye did not dispute that some grades were changed, but said the students had not received instruction that fit their individual educationp plans. He accused the teachers of being “disgruntled.”

Newsweek reexamines anxieties surrounding autism, a mystery with no known cause. The uncertainty is fueling an ongoing vaccine debate and harsh divisions within the autism community about how to view and treat the disorder. While some feel that autism is a disease in need of a cure, others are calling for neurodiversity, the idea that differences in human behavior should be celebrated.

“Our feeling is that the autism spectrum is an intrinsic part of our personality that cannot be separated,” says [Ari] Ne’eman, [president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and a 20-year-old university student with Asperger's syndrome.]

And he worries about research that might one day locate genes and other markers that could help doctors test for autism. Researchers say such knowledge would allow them to intervene early, during a critical window of development in the first year of life. Ne’eman’s fear? That autism will become like Down syndrome-essentially selected out of the population.

An accompanying chart of NIH research funding shows autism is expected to receive $128 million this year, or approximately $85.33 for each of the 1.5 million people diagnosed.

Of the conditions named, Down syndrome receives the smallest amount of research funds, both in the aggregate and on a per capita basis, with a total of $17 million or $48.57 per person diagnosed.

(more…)

From the Chicago Tribune:

In Illinois, nearly a third of all the schools that fell short of meeting federal achievement standards this year did so solely because of the performance of students enrolled in special education, according to state report card data released this week.

The vast majority of special education students … sit down to the same questions as every other student in their grade.

If, as a group, they fail to meet standards, the entire school could face sanctions specified in the law, from having to provide tutoring to a state takeover or restructuring.

… It leaves administrators with a dilemma: They don’t want to appear to blame their special education students for causing the school to fail, but they also have to explain to parents why their school didn’t meet the bar.

Seattle Times editorial columnist Kate Riley reverses her earlier opinion, and assails her state’s testing standards after her son passes with flying colors.

Here’s the punchline to my son’s letter. He is autistic in a self-contained special-education classroom with limited mainstreaming, can read some words, can add a little and can barely draw a straight line.

She says her son’s portfolio showed progress, but in no way demonstrated mastery of the fourth grade curriculum. The state assessments are designed to implement the No Child Left Behind law.

OK. Let’s get this straight. This stupid assessment doesn’t change the worth of my kid, or any kid. He’s still the nicest, most fun member of the family to be around and he’s got great taste in music.

But what these tests should tell us honestly is whether a student meets one reasonable minimum standard of academic achievement – for all kids. (more…)