'Some parents say special education is too easy on students'

‘Parents say schools game system, let kids graduate without skills’

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, John Hechinger and Daniel Golden give weight to parent arguments that special education students are being passed through without mastering academic material. Hechinger and Golden track lawsuits claiming that special education programs are undermining academic standards by giving students with disabilities a free ride. The resulting story, the latest in a continuing series by the Journal, assumes the newspaper’s usual skeptical view of the value of special education programs.

In attempting to document the collision of the nation’s special education programs with academic standards and graduation requirements, the reporters find conflicting regulations, poor communication, and lots of hard feelings among teachers, administrators, regulators and parents.

The story is worth your time, although readers should be warned that the conflict it describes is a fundamental and thorny one that has been developing since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was passed more than 30 years ago. It defies easy solutions.

Sadly, scant attention is given here to the role that could be played by the effective use of each student’s federally-mandated Individualized Education Plan (IEP). IEPs should be designed to challenge each individual student and should be used as the standard against which to measure student achievement.

Instead, underlying the story seems to be the impossible expectation that children with disabilities should be performing at the same academic level as their peers without disabilities, a goal which the reporters say is the result of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. That law requires that children with disabilities take the same tests as do other students.

There is plenty of blame to go around here. An attorney reports that school districts are passing special education students to avoide being blamed for not providing the right services if students faile. Teachers say they have tried to fail students who didn’t make an effort or skipped class, only to have administrators insist on passing grades. Parents report that students received standard diplomas without being able to demonstrate adequate language or math skills.

It appears that a fundamental, and neglected, aspect of the dispute may center around the terminology used in grades and diplomas. Many states require all students to earn the same kind of diploma, creating anxieties in families where students are not performing at typical levels on tests. Policies on grading are similarly divided.

One wonders whether a separate grading structure for students with IEPs would allow teachers to more accurately measure student progress against their IEP rather than against standards that have been developed for students without disabiities. Such grades, with a notation indicating an adapted curriculum, would give a more accurate view of student work as well as providing motivation for achievement, but would not provide inflated transcripts for college applications or feed unreasonable parental expectations.

From the Wall Street Journal. Registration required. See also the Journal’s listing of all its stories on what it calls “mainstreaming” and others refer to as “full inclusion.”