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Rule change effective January 8, 2004

Final Rule Published in Federal Register on December 9, 2003
http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/finrule/2003-4/120903a.html

Letter to Chief State School Officers Defining Process for the Waiver of the 1 percent rule, June 27, 2003 and March 2, 2004
http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/secletter/030627.html
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/secletter/031211.html

Affects NCLB Regulations 200.2 (b), 200.3 (a)(1), 200.6(a), 201.1(d),
200.13(c)(3)& (4) and 200.2( c ) 1-3)

What NCLB says:
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 The law prohibits states and school districts from intentionally excluding students with disabilities from the NCLB accountability systems. Excluding students with disabilities from testing is also a violation of of IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
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 The law requires that the assessment scores taken by children with disabilities be disaggregated and be annually reported to parents and the public.
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 Most students with disabilities should participate in the same tests taken by their peers. Some of these students should receive accommodations such as increased time or the use of assistive technology to ensure.
The Changes:
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 States, school districts and schools will have the flexibility to count the proficient scores of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who take assessments based on alternative achievement standards.
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 Eliminates a federal definition of “significant cognitive disabilities” and allows each state to define this group of students.
 
How It Was Before the Rules Change:
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 Without the change, assessment scores of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities would have to be measured against grade-level standards and considered “not proficient” when states measured adequate yearly progress. In other words, those students were required, under the previous rules, to be assessed by their achievement gauged by standards that could be deemed inappropriate for their intellectual development. The new rules change allows states and school districts to more accurately gauge student their progress based on the alternative assessment.
   
Provisions:
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 The number of the proficient scores may not exceed 1 percent of all students in the grades tested, which is about 9 per cent of students with disabilities nationwide.
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 The 1 percent cap applies only to district and state accountability decisions, not to individual schools which may exceed the 1 percent cap. In other words, an individual school may have more that 1 percent of its student body meeting the definition of significant cognitive disability, but the school district and the state cannot for meeting the AYP
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 Alternative achievement standards still must be tied to the state academic content standards.
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 Each individual state is responsible for defining “significant cognitively disabled.”
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 If a state or school district believes that they have a higher percentage of students with significant cognitive disabilities than 1 percent, they may apply to exceed the cap if they can demonstrate that they have a larger population.
   
Parent Involvement and Participation:
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 Inform parents about the states definition of significantly cognitively disabled and what implications that has for their child.
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 Parents should be given the guidelines that the state uses to determine when a child’s significant cognitive disability justifies the alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards.
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 Parents should be informed that their child will be assessed based on the alternate achievement standards, and what the implications are as a result of that decision, For instance, some states require all students to take a grade level test to graduate, and do not recognize alternative assessments as a valid graduation assessment.
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 Parents should be informed about the kinds of accommodations their child will receive when taking the assessment.