Joint Council of County Special Services School Districts
NCLB Must Not Leave Special Education Students Behind

Introduction

The Joint Council of County Special Services School Districts supports the recommendations of New Jersey’s Leadership for Education Excellence (LEE) coalition to address unintended problems with implementation of No Child Left Behind. While the LEE paper included many issues related to special education, the Joint Council wishes to build on that effort by focusing on some of the specific problems facing New Jersey schools that serve students with severe disabilities.

The eight county special services school districts located in Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Cape May, Gloucester, Mercer, Salem and Warren counties enroll about 4,500 of the state’s most severely disabled students in regionalized public school programs specially designed to meet their educational needs. Most of our students have multiple disabilities, autism, behavioral disorders, or severe cognitive or physical impairments. Many need wheelchairs and other devices to get around, and they have a difficult combination of serious medical problems and mental handicaps that render them unable to communicate verbally or meet their own feeding and toileting needs. Many also have extreme emotional disorders, which make them volatile and often violent in the classroom.

These students require specialized teaching and care, such as classes with a very low student/teacher ratio, one-on-one instruction, classroom aides, and even personal aides. In addition, many of our students require therapy and medical services as part of their school day.

No Child Left Behind has many laudable provisions. The law seeks to boost achievement by special education students by requiring that they be taught by highly qualified teachers and that districts be accountable for their progress on standardized tests. However, these requirements fail to recognize that the unique educational needs of special education students are very different from other subgroups of students monitored under NCLB. The law also ignores the broad continuum of special education needs, treating all classified students in the same manner. Though well-intentioned, several provisions of NCLB have the potential to harm rather than help special education students:

Special education students should not be forced to take standardized tests that are inappropriate for their individual educational needs.

Sanctioning school districts for the performance of special education students will create a backlash against these students

Requirements that special education teachers be "highly qualified" in academic content areas will reduce emphasis on addressing the special education needs of students with severe disabilities

Adequate Yearly Progress

Issue: No Child Left Behind requires all special education students to participate in standardized testing. Special education students have a broad continuum of abilities and needs, from minor speech or learning disabilities to profound cognitive impairments. State and federal law recognizes this reality and requires all classified students to have an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) that determines the content and method of their instructional program. NCLB contradicts this established practice by requiring all special education students to participate in standardized assessments, even if they are exempted by their IEP.

If the local Child Study Team determines that a student should not be required to pass the regular state assessments, it is inappropriate and potentially harmful for NCLB to require the student to take the test and count their performance toward their local district’s achievement of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

The county special services school districts are required to administer the NJASK, GEPA, and HSPA tests to many students who are unable to pass these assessments, and the children are often frustrated and unnerved by the experience of taking the tests. Time is taken away from meaningful instruction and confidence is shattered by this meaningless exercise. Further, the student’s home district is penalized for the student’s poor performance on a test that he/she was never expected to pass.

Recommendations: NCLB should recognize the individual needs of special education students and permit districts to assess their academic progress in a manner that is consistent with the IEP required by law:

Students exempted from standardized state tests by their IEP should not be required to take these tests for the purpose of determining district AYP.

Each student’s IEP should determine how the student’s progress will be assessed for the purpose of measuring school and district accountability for AYP.

Issue: NCLB establishes an artificial 1% cap on the percentage of students with severe disabilities in each grade that may take an alternative assessment for the purposes of determining AYP. The number of students afflicted with severe cognitive disabilities is not limited to 1% per grade in each school. It is not sound educational policy to limit the number of students who may take an alternative assessment by an arbitrary percentage.

New Jersey’s Alternate Proficiency Assessment (APA) is a rigorous portfolio assessment that identifies the progress of each individual child in meeting the goals of his/her IEP and the state Core Curriculum Content Standards. Because most of their students have severe disabilities, the county special services school districts complete the APA process for a large percentage of their students. It is an extremely difficult and time-consuming process that provides a meaningful and appropriate assessment of individual student progress. While the 1% cap does not apply to receiving schools such as the county special services districts, it does apply to the schools that send students to the CSSSD. The sending districts are permitted to count the results of the APA for only 1% of the students in each grade, regardless of the level of disabilities.

Recommendation:

The arbitrary 1% cap on the percentage of students in each grade who may take the APA and have results applied to districts’ AYP should be removed. The number who may take alternative assessments should determined by the local Child Study Team, or by a formula that considers the number of students with severe disabilities in the district.

Issue: Sanctions based on special education students’ performance on standardized tests are inappropriate and will create a backlash against special education. NCLB applies sanctions for schools that do not make AYP in each of 40 areas, including achievement of special education students. This provision punishes districts with large numbers of special education students or those with more severe disabilities. The sanctions will force districts to place an undue emphasis on special education assessments rather than meaningful progress in developing academic and life skills so essential for these students. This provision also threatens to create a backlash against special education students who will be perceived as "causing" an otherwise high-performing school district to "fail."

Recommendations: Schools should not receive sanctions for special education students’ performance on standardized tests that are not appropriate for their educational needs.

The performance of special education students exempted by their IEPs should not count toward AYP.

When recommended by the IEP, schools should use alternative assessments, such as the APA, which measure individual progress. The artificial 1% cap should be removed.

School districts should be required to track and report progress for special education students that are required to take standardized tests or alternative assessments, but these results should not count toward AYP.

If the progress of special education students continues to be a factor in AYP, schools serving large special education populations (20% or more), and those with severe disabilities should be exempted from sanctions triggered by special education performance only.

Highly Qualified Teachers and Staff

Issue: NCLB requirements for special education teachers to demonstrate that they are highly qualified in academic content areas reduces emphasis on special education training and will reduce the supply of qualified special education teachers. While the Joint Council supports efforts to raise the quality and preparation of all teachers, these requirements create particular problems for special education teachers in a secondary self-contained setting who must demonstrate that they are "highly qualified" in each content area being taught. These teachers have many years of experience and training in dealing with students with serious behavioral disorders and other extreme needs. NCLB ignores this important expertise, and focuses only on their Praxis scores and academic coursework to determine whether they are highly qualified to teach these demanding students.

While current staff will be able to meet HQT requirements by 2006, when they leave or retire districts will have a difficult time filling these positions with new teachers certified in special education and multiple content areas.

New Jersey’s certification rules are being revised to meet NCLB requirements for special education teachers. All new special education teachers will be required to have dual certification in special education and elementary or a content area, making it much more difficult for candidates to earn a special education certificate. This change will dramatically reduce the supply of certified special education teachers in New Jersey.

Recommendations: The requirement that all special education teachers be "highly qualified" in academic content areas should be modified to restore the focus on special education training.

IDEA reauthorization should clarify that a teacher who completes coursework and training in special education is "highly qualified" to teach special education students in a self-contained setting. NLCB should be modified accordingly.

Special education teachers should address the need for academic content knowledge through appropriate professional development opportunities, including collegiate coursework.

A change in the federal law will enable New Jersey to drop the ill-advised requirement for all new special education teachers to hold dual certification in special education and elementary or one or more academic content area.

Issue: Though not included in NCLB, the Joint Council is concerned that future proposals may require special education aides and assistants to demonstrate that they are highly qualified. If IDEA reauthorization requires these critical paraprofessionals to meet similar requirements to those NCLB imposed on Title I aides, the impact on students and schools will be devastating. The county special services school districts employ numerous paraprofessionals, and assign multiple aides to each class of students with severe disabilities. Unlike Title I aides addressed in NCLB, many of these paraprofessionals do not provide direct academic instruction. Rather, they assist severely disabled students with their extensive care needs, such as feeding, toileting and transport. Future training and certification requirements for these paraprofessionals must recognize different functions and level of responsibility. A blanket requirement for all special education paraprofessionals to complete additional coursework and/or earn an Associate’s Degree is inappropriate, and will cause many experienced assistants who provide critical support for severely disabled students to seek other opportunities. Schools will be unable to hire qualified aides and personal assistants, and students with severe disabilities will suffer.

Recommendations: IDEA reauthorization must recognize that special education paraprofessionals have different levels of responsibility, from one-on-one instruction and discrete trial regimens, to custodial care such as diapering, feeding, and transporting students to therapies. Any requirements for additional coursework should be targeted to paraprofessionals with bona fide instructional responsibilities and structured to address varying levels of responsibility.