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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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School Gives Special Ed Kids A Different Test, and Scores Soar
Produced by Linda Lutton on Friday, November 20, 2009
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It’s not easy to figure out how well schools are educating special education students. Even test scores can be misleading. That’s because special education kids can be moved in and out of different categories, and sometimes take different tests. Last month, we brought you a story from Lincoln Elementary in Calumet City. We said Lincoln had beat the odds and improved scores for its special needs kids. WBEZ has found out a little more about just how the school did that.
When Rodney Estvan saw that more than half of the special education students at Lincoln Elementary were meeting state standards, he imagined parents moving there from far and wide.
The scores are remarkable, especially for a cash-strapped south suburban district. But Estvan, who’s a special education advocate, smelled a rat.
ESTVAN: I immediately thought, I don’t see these numbers except in the North Shore.
Those North Shore districts have more money for teachers and materials. So how did tiny Lincoln do it? Assistant principal Bonnie Walker says they completely revamped special education classes:
WALKER: What we’ve done is to make them look like everyone else in the building. They have the same materials, so they are exposed to the same curriculum as all of the others.
But there’s one thing she didn’t mention about why scores have climbed more than 30 percentage points in the last three years. The school started giving lots of its special education kids a different test, a test that’s supposed to be reserved for the most severely mentally disabled kids around.
ESTVAN: To be crude about it, we’re talking about students that are in the IQ range below 60.
For an idea of just how few students are supposed to take this alternate test, check out state guidelines: They tell schools that most of their mentally retarded students should still take the regular test.
Five years ago, Lincoln didn’t give any kids the alternate exam. Last year, 41 kids took it-- that’s nearly a third of all Lincoln’s special ed kids, and 6.5 percent of all test takers. It was done with the state’s approval. Here’s Estvan again.
ESTVAN: That’s going to have an enormous effect on the test scores. If you take the lowest performing students out of the pool and have the remaining students in the pool, your test scores go up pretty much automatically—and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have really increased performance.
And it turns out Lincoln is not alone. WBEZ requested records that show more districts are getting waivers from the state to test more of their students with the alternate exam. The state declined to say why nearly a quarter of districts got waivers this year—up from 16 percent just two years ago.
Many special education teachers say the waivers make sense. Educators have argued that the regular state tests are an absurd measure for kids who are far below grade level. “What do we gain from giving a kid with overwhelming learning disabilities a grade-level test?”they want to know.
Lincoln Superintendent Darryl Taylor says kids there are taking the alternate test because it better measures what they can do…
TAYLOR: Are we trying to get uniform data? Or are we really trying to find out, trying to assess what kids are able to do. I would hope and challenge that we’re trying to assess what kids are able to do, not just a matter of giving everyone the same assessment regardless of what their needs are.
Taylor says parents help make the decision of whether their child gets an alternate test. And, he notes… the state signed off on giving the exam to all 41 kids.
Lincoln kids are doing amazingly well on the alternate test… with 92 percent meeting standards, miles above the state average.
The whole thing troubles Estvan.
ESTVAN: When you do what happens at this school you’re gonna tell parents that you have a school that’s really made dramatic improvement for students with disabilities, and I don’t think that’s really an accurate picture.
Estvan says parents need real information about how well schools are doing with special needs kids. He says the only way schools will ever try to get special ed kids to read and do math at grade level is if they’re truly held accountable.
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