LEXINGTON HERALD February 17, 2008

HEADLINE: Special-needs kids struggling with NCLB

By Raviya H. Ismail

One of Katina Brown's students has a difficult time following sequences. By the time Brown gets to steps three and four, the boy is still focused on the first two steps. And as hard as he tries, and for all the tears he cries, his brain still cannot take in all that information.

He's just one of the students Brown teaches as a sixth-grade special-needs teacher at Leestown Middle School. Aside from making sure her students learn the lessons of the day, she's also required to make sure students take and pass state math and reading tests, just like their peers with regular needs.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools that are unable to get their special-needs students to meet these targets are punished. Leestown is one of six Fayette County schools that failed to meet NCLB goals last year in both reading and math in part because of their special-needs students.

Nationally, schools are struggling to help special-needs students meet NCLB learning goals; in the past, educators weren't held accountable by federal standards for the achievement of these students.

Many educators agree with the theory behind the NCLB law, that schools should be held accountable for the learning and achievement of all students regardless of barriers. But it's the execution of the law that is troublesome, they say. Expecting students with learning difficulties to take and pass one-size-fits-all math and reading exams like students without disabilities is unfair and unrealistic.

"Everybody can't learn things the same way," said Brown. "Some kids are going to get it, and unfortunately some kids are not. I don't think it's fair that (special-needs students) have to meet the same expectations if they have some struggles in various areas of their education."

But Ross Wiener, vice president of program and policy for the non-profit Education Trust, believes NCLB is needed to hold teachers and schools accountable for teaching special-needs students who were previously "warehoused in education."

"They are being taken out of the closets and out of the basements and into the classroom," Wiener said. "We don't know what the potential of these students is yet because we have not pushed hard enough in the past."

Wiener does agree that teachers may struggle to meet the needs of these students, but he argues that serving special-needs students is the responsibility not just of special-education teachers, but of the entire school district.

"The pendulum was too far in one direction before and it's important that we get it in the right place," he said. "It's huge progress that we're actually looking at the achievement of students with disabilities and creating a sense of accountability for their achievement."

Targets raised each year
Every year, the goals of No Child Left Behind get harder, with the law requiring all students to reach higher levels on tests every year. For example, Kentucky middle schools in 2007 had to have 26.93 percent of students reach proficiency or higher in math tests for schools to pass targets. In 2008, that number will be 37.37 percent. Reading has even higher standards.

For a school like Leestown, such goals can be daunting. There are about 85 students labeled with special needs out of the school population of about 550. The school has to make sure all of its students meet federal goals, disability or not.

Disabilities include behavioral issues such as attention deficit disorder, students who have speech and language disorders or delays, those with learning disabilities and students who have Down syndrome.

A very small percentage of special-needs students -- about 0.2 percent in Kentucky -- received medical exemptions and did not take exams. Other groups of special-needs students can qualify for modifications while taking tests, including one-on-one testing, a scribe to write answers and an assistant to read and paraphrase questions

But expecting students with a wide range of needs to reach the same level of proficiency by 2014 is unrealistic, said Leestown Interim Principal Debbie Tronzo.

"It's not an issue with everybody having high expectations for all the children, because every child has a right to be educated and have an education that is equal to that of another child," said Tronzo, a former principal at Crawford Middle School, which also failed to meet NCLB last year because of special-needs students. "I don't think anybody would say, 'we're not going to get them to proficiency.' Our goal is proficiency. It's just that the time line is going to vary a little bit."

Tronzo remembered a special-needs student at Crawford who was asked to take a standardized test and refused. She came into the principal's office crying, Tronzo recalled. The student had a mild mental disability and said something Tronzo would never forget.

"She looked up at me and said, 'You know I can't do that, Ms. Tronzo,'" Tronzo recalled. "It's real disheartening to watch them struggle, when you know they're not ready for this particular test. They know they can't, and we're asking them to do it anyway."

Brenda Fettinger is a Leestown special-education teacher whose five students have a variety of mental disabilities, including Down syndrome. Fettinger and parents say these students will benefit most from learning real-life skills, such as learning to use the bathroom, eating by themselves and crossing the street safely.

But the law requires them to participate in alternate portfolios that measure concepts their peers are learning. Fettinger's students are in seventh and eighth grade, so she must make sure they grasp theories including area and perimeter and decimal numbers.

Fettinger's students cannot read. When she gives them assignments that will be part of their portfolios, she must read all the questions, read all the answers and expect students to make sense of concepts.

"It's something we have to do so I've done the best I can to break it down to their level where I think they can do it," Fettinger said. "I'm not sure how much that it means to them or will ever mean to them."

'A double-edged sword'
Melanie Tyner-Wilson, a parent advocate for special-needs children who has a son with autism, says a federal mandate is necessary to hold schools accountable for all students. She acknowledges that her son, Jay, 14, an eighth-grade student at Morton Middle, performs poorly on the state tests, even with accommodations such as more time and a scribe to write answers.

NCLB "has forced disabilities to be on the radar scope," she said. "On the flip side, it's kind of been a double-edged sword. You've got some real challenges because you're asking a child that truly, truly functions at a different level where (taking) these tests are not appropriate. I don't think we've worked out the best way to solve it."

In Fayette County, Crawford, Southern and Bryan Station Traditional Magnet Middle schools and Bryan Station High also missed meeting NCLB goals in both reading and math due either in part or completely to special-needs students.

Winburn has about 575 students, with about 73 students labeled as special-needs. Only one qualifies to take an alternate portfolio, designed for students with significant special needs who are unable to take the regular assessments. The portfolio is a body of work that includes tests and other work collected throughout the academic school year. About 1 percent of special-needs students in the state qualified to take the alternate portfolio last year. At Leestown, only five students qualified for that form of assessment.

Winburn was one of two schools in Fayette County recently granted $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to help meet NCLB targets. Schools that were labeled as Tier 4, or those that failed to meet federal targets five years in a row, were given grants.

Winburn also is one of few schools that in January moved to a full-on inclusion model, which means special-needs students are taught side-by-side with peers of various abilities. Principal Tina Stevenson said the school decided to move to this model after visiting several schools with special-needs students that had notable increases in test scores.

For all students, including those with disabilities and the other categories required under NCLB, schools are held accountable if there are at least 10 students in a particular subgroup in the grades tested per year and 60 students overall in the school. For example, in a middle school, each of the grades 6 through 8 must have at least 10 students with disabilities for those students' test scores to count.

If a school fails to have one group meet NCLB goals, it is considered a failing school, an all-or-nothing method of holding schools accountable.

Cynthia Langlois-Parker, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Winburn, said schools should be given more credit for making progress.

"If you miss one target area, you're a failing school," she said.

Schools like Winburn and Leestown also have another problem. Unlike high-achieving schools that don't have so many subgroups represented, these schools are responsible for students that have all struggled to meet NCLB targets. In addition to special-needs students, these groups include low-income, black, Hispanic and English as a Second Language students. Winburn's black and low-income students didn't meet NCLB reading goals; Leestown's overall student population failed to meet the reading goal, and its Hispanic and low-income students also missed reading targets.

Ellen Dennison, an elective teacher at Winburn who's taught there for 18 years, said the philosophy behind No Child Left Behind is right and fair. However, she said, she agrees that expecting special-needs students to perform equally to their peers is unfair.

If changes are made in No Child Left Behind at the federal level, she hopes that the test could be weighted differently for such students.

"It's like having three or four different classrooms of kids all mixed up into one," Dennison said. "And you're supposed to meet every group's needs to the fullest and at all times. And many days that's just impossible."