More on Special Education and NCLB

As promised, ES has a new Chart You Can Trust on NCLB accountability and special education students.

As this great article in EdWeek discusses, some lawmakers and education groups (such as the National Education Association and National School Boards Association) are calling for more flexibility when assessing special education students. Specifically, they’d like to give students assessments deemed appropriate by the students’ Individual Education Plan team (the group responsible for deciding on a special education student's education plan). But advocates for special education students argue that allowing this kind of flexibility will lower achievement standards and turn back the clock on accountability for these students.

I argue that the majority of special education students can meet the same, grade-level standards as regular education students, and holding them to different standards could be detrimental. Click here for more on this issue.