NCLB's 'special' education

It took five years for reason to prevail. At last, the Bush administration has eased some rules that oversee testing of students with disabilities. More of these students will be permitted to take tests better suited to them than the stock tests required under the No Child Left Behind law.

Under these changes, roughly 30 percent of children with disabilities could be assessed by alternative means. Earlier, NCLB allowed students with the most severe disabilities — roughly 10 percent of the overall special education school population — to be evaluated using different instruments. Seemingly, though, it would not take a full five years of data collection to ascertain that it was pointless to use the same test to evaluate honor students and those who require certain special education services.

Although long overdue, this shift in policy is an important demonstration that the Bush administration recognizes that school testing is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Allowances have to be made for learners with differing abilities.

The testing component of NCLB — and the accompanying sanctions for schools that do not achieve "adequate yearly progress," according to testing outcomes — has been one of the most controversial aspects of the federal law. Early on in the program, some schools were labeled failing because too few students in certain subgroups took the tests — never mind some of these schools' long histories of academic prowess.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this policy shift is that students with disabilities who have struggled with the prescribed tests will not be assessed by standards that may be impossible for them to achieve. In truth, students who receive special education services are perhaps the most thoroughly evaluated school population because of their individual education plans. A rigid standardized test will not capture the progress students have made toward specific goals. In other words, it has been a meaningless exercise.

These concerns are nothing new. Special educators raised these frustrations early on in the NCLB experience, likewise for school superintendents and other state leaders.

It is true that many states object to NCLB because they view it as an intrusion on state's rights, and they bristle, appropriately, over its unfunded mandates. But their legitimate criticisms should have carried more weight early on. Yes, NCLB has been considerably fine-tuned over time. It's unfortunate, though, that it took so long for well-reasoned criticisms to result in policy changes.