NCLB & AYP

Recently, I have had some inquiries related to the district's status regarding the No Child Left Behind Act. The inquiries have centered on the topic of our middle school being designated as a School in Need of Improvement. This blog is an attempt to explain why we have received this designation and what it means.

Each year the district's performance on the New Jersey Assessment of Student's Skills and Knowledge (grades 3-8) are disaggregated by subgroups for examination. There are 40 groups, including gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc. One of these subcategories is students with disabilities.

Of the 40 groups, two of ours did not make Adequate Yearly Progress according to the NCLB criteria. Those two categories were students with disabilities in both math and language arts. If any subgroup does not meet the Adequate Yearly Progress standard, then that school is designated as in need of improvement. This is the case, even though every other category including the total student population passes.

You might be asking, why this year for those two groups? In order for a subgroup to be reported annually, there must be 30 students in that subcategory across three grade spans. Alexandria Township has never met this requirement, so this subcategory was never reported upon. Last year, the district had one student with individualized educational plans move into the school district in grade 7. In addition, we graduated 5 students with individualized education plans. Eight students moved up from seventh to eighth grade. As a result, the district had 31 students with disabilities in grades 6,7 and 8. The previous year we had twenty-six students in these three grades.

Grade # of students 2008-2009 # of students 2009-2010
6 13 9
7 8 14
8 5 8
Totals 26 31

As a result of this increase in the subcategory of students with disabilities, the school district is now reported on in this category. If we had to report on this subcategory in any previous year, the school district would have received the designation of in need of improvement at that point in time. It is not that the average performance for the students has declined significantly, it is that the total number of students eligible to be reported on in this category has increased.

This does not mean that we do not dedicate ourselves to improving the performance of our students who have disabilities. However, as a professional educator with an extensive background in special education, I have serious reservations about using criterion-referenced standardized tests to measure the progress of our students with disabilities.

In some cases, the material on these tests is not the most important things for these students to learn. I do not expect my child study team or special education teachers to focus their instruction on improving test scores when the content is not truly what the student needs to learn. The I in the IEP stands for Individualized, a concept that seems to have been forgotten by the NCLB creators.

In some cases, the nature of the testing does not allow for our students with disabilities to present their full complement of knowledge and skills. Those who have the most difficulty with paper and pencil tasks are being required to complete an assessment that utilizes paper and pencil as the sole source of producing answers. Could our students with disabilities perform better if they were allowed to express their knowledge in other forms?

Standardized testing bases student performance on expected outcomes by chronological age. This assumes that all students can learn at the same rate of speed. Yet, brain research clearly informs educators of the developmental differences in learning. This is not to mention the clearly established differences among students with regards to the speed at which the brain processes information. I do believe that all children can learn, I just don't believe they can all learn at the same rate of speed or in the same way.

Do these flaws excuse us from expecting academic growth from our students with disabilities? Of course not! In fact, I argue that these students need more growth than their peers. That is why we have been in the process of implementing our own curriculum-based measurement program that will track the progress of students in resource center classrooms throughout the school district. Monthly we intend to use quick but reliable and valid "probes" to assess students' performance in reading, writing and math. We will use the information to inform instructional and program decisions. We are currently training our teachers in this program and anticipate having it started by the end of this school year.

I am a strong advocate of accountability for results with students. Those who know me, realize that I do not make excuses for not obtaining the results expected. However, I am also realistic and try my best to be fair minded. I do expect significant growth for all of our students, I just don't think that the best way to measure this growth is via a flawed standardized test that is taken once a year.