The Cheating Scandal and Students on the Spectrum

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the growing number of college students on the spectrum. The recent college admissions scandal is a blow to them.

Ryan W. Miller at USA Today:

When Veronica Soliz's son took the SAT, he was granted an hour and a half of extra time for the entire test through a disability accommodation.

Soliz, mother of an autistic child, said she was thankful he got that, not realizing then that they could have asked for more time.

When she read the news Tuesday that children of TV celebrities and wealthy elites had been granted twice the amount of time her son got for disabilities they allegedly fabricated, she was in disbelief.
...

"To see that somebody just paid for what we've been dealing with his whole life, it was just a gut punch," Soliz said. "It's way too hard for us to get what we need and way too easy for people like Felicity Huffman."

...
Nadine Finigan-Carr and her son, who has autism, started the process in February of his junior year.

He didn't have an updated plan on record because he attended a private school. The family had to find specialists, sit for the necessary tests and complete the various forms needed to send to the College Board and ACT.

It wasn't until summer that Finigan-Carr's son was approved for the accommodations he needed. By then, he could take the tests only once in the fall, unlike many of his peers who took the tests multiple times to try to improve their scores.

"This was not something that we just got somebody to sign a piece of paper to do," Finigan-Carr said.

Accountability Tests

Christina Samuels writes at Education Week:

Lawmakers are wading into the complicated issue of accountability tests as they ponder changes to the law currently known as No Child Left Behind, but a group of disability advocacy organizations are already saying they don't want to see one change that has been floated—an elimination of the cap on students who can be tested to "alternate achievement standards."

Currently, about 1 percent of all students—equivalent to about 10 percent of students with disabilities—can be counted as proficient for accountability purposes on tests that have less depth, breadth, and complexity than the assessments given to their typically developing peers. These "1 percent tests" have been aimed at students with severe cognitive disabilities. (The tests are formally known as "alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards," or AA-AAS.)

The draft renewal legislation proposed by Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee who chairs the Senate education committee, would lift those caps, leaving it up to the states to decide how many students can be counted as proficient when taking these alternate tests.

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities' education task force—a coalition of more than 20 groups— said in a Jan. 21 letter that such a move would "essentially wipe out a decade of progress which has allowed parents, teachers and school leaders to better understand the potential of students with disabilities."

Louisiana Standards

Christiana Samuels reports at Education Week:

The Louisiana state board of education voted Wednesday pay a state university $251,000 to help train school-based teams on how to set rigorous standards that allow students with disabilities to show that they've mastered academic content.

A new law that passed in July gives individualized education program teams the power to create alternate pathways for grade promotion and graduation, thus permitting some students with disabilities to bypass Louisiana's high-stakes testing system. That program requires students to pass tests in 4th grade, 8th grade, and high school, but students with disabilities who have repeatedly failed the tests can now instead meet standards developed by their IEP teams to progress through school and earn a diploma.

But teaching IEP teams how to create those pathways—without running afoul of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which says students with disabilities should get the same access to academics as their peers—is proving difficult. The grant, which was awarded to Louisiana State University Human Development Center in New Orleans, was approved without debate, according to an article in The Advocate in Baton Rouge

Special Education and the Reauthorization of ESEA

Alyson Klein reports at Education Week that a number of interest groups are weighing in on the ESEA reauthorization, including special education advocates:

The NCLB law, which requires states to break out student achievement data by particular groups of students, including those in special education, "has provided so much good information we never had before about how students with disabilities are really performing," said Lindsay Jones, the director of public policy and advocacy for the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

That doesn't mean, she added, that there should be overtesting or "bad tests." But annual, statewide, assessments have provided educators with "an important data point" she said, helping to clarify "how kids with disabilities are performing compared to their nondisabled peers." The vast majority of students in special education can and should be up to par with most general education students, she said. 

Back in October, as the testing issue was beginning to heat up in Washington, the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, which includes the Council for Exceptional Children, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Easter Seals and other organizations, sent a letter to the leaders of the House education committee opposing legislation that would have scaled back the number of tests required in the law. (Back then, it was Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who was and still is chairman of the panel, and Miller, who has been replaced by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.)

At the time, the groups were referring to this bill, by Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., that would have called for grade-span testing, and this one, by Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., that would have reduced the number of tests students are required to take. But similar legislation seems likely to be reintroduced in the new Congress, so that letter has taken on renewed significance.

Achievement Levels in a Standardized Test

Christina Samuels reports at Education Week:

Most students with individualized education programs scored in the lowest achievement level on the field tests administered last spring by the Smarter Balanced Achievement Consortium, according to data released by the test-development organization.

The range of students with IEPs scoring at level 1, the lowest of four levels on the test, ranged from 61 percent in 4th grade math to 77 percent in 7th grade English/language arts. In comparison, 27 percent of all students scored at the lowest level in 4th grade math, and 34 percent of all students scored at the lowest level in 7th grade English/language arts.

Students with disabilities performed best in 3rd grade math, where 18 percent scored at level 3 or above, indicating they are proficient in the skills and knowledge for their grade. For all students, 39 percent were able to clear that bar.

The report results were first published on the website of the Advocacy Institute, a nonprofit organization that closely tracks educational issues related to children with disabilities. They were released by Smarter Balanced on Dec. 22. The tests will be fully implemented by 2014-15.

Special Ed & Standardized Tests in California

Previous posts have discussed standardized tests. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

California schools have lowered the academic expectations for tens of thousands of students in special education over the past few years, allowing them take a shorter and easier set of standardized tests at a participation rate that far exceeds federal guidelines.

In the spring of 2012, more than half the state's 400,000 students with disabilities took the simplified version of the math, science and language arts tests.

That's nearly three times higher than it should be, and the state should intervene to make sure the modified test is not overused, federal Department of Education officials told The Chronicle.

In general, only 1 in 5 special needs students have a disability that could prevent them from achieving grade-level proficiency on the same tests students without disabilities take, U.S. officials said.

"We are concerned about the high rate of participation in the modified assessment," the U.S. Department of Education said in a statement in response to California's numbers. "We want to make sure that students with disabilities are held to the same high standards as other students."

The story raises the possibility that California is engaging in these practices less to help kids with disabilities than to game its performance stats:

The high rate of use of the California Modified Assessment for students with special needs has raised concerns not only about academic expectations, but also about the impact on overall state test scores and proficiency rates.

The 210,000 students taking the modified assessment - historically among the lowest scorers on the regular test - are no longer part of the equation in calculating state proficiency rates.
Without those students in the mix, the English proficiency rate is about 3 percentage points higher than it otherwise would be.

Standardized Tests and Higher Education

The Government Accountability Office reports:

Standardized tests are often required to gain admission into postsecondary schools or to obtain professional certifications. Federal disability laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) require entities that administer these tests to provide accommodations, such as extended time or changes in test format, tostudents with disabilities.

 ...

An estimated 179,000 individuals with disabilities—approximately 2 percent—of about 7.7 million test takers took an exam with an accommodation in the most recent testing year, according to data provided to us.19 Approximately half of all accommodations requested and granted were for applicants with learning disabilities, and one-quarter was for those with ADD or ADHD. The remainder of accommodations requested and granted was for applicants with physical or sensory disabilities, such as an orthopedic or vision impairment; or psychiatric disabilities, such as depression; and other disabilities, such as diabetes and autism spectrum disorders.

The report finds lack of coordination in enforcement:

 Federal enforcement of laws and regulations governing testing accommodations is largely complaint-driven and involves multiple agencies. While Justice hasoverall responsibility for enforcing compliance under the ADA, Education andHHS have enforcement responsibilities under the Rehabilitation Act for testingcompanies that receive federal financial assistance from them. Education andHHS officials said that they investigate each eligible complaint. Justice officialssaid they review each complaint at in-take, but they do not make a determination on every complaint because of the large volume of complaints it receives. Justicehas clarified ADA requirements for testing accommodations primarily by revising its regulations, but it lacks a strategic approach to targeting enforcement.Specifically, Justice has not fully utilized complaint data—either its own or that ofother agencies—to inform its efforts. Justice officials said that they reviewed complaints on a case-by-case basis but did not conduct systematic searches of their data to inform their overall approach to enforcement. Additionally, Justicehas not initiated compliance reviews of testing companies, and its technical assistance on this subject has been limited.

Autism and Intelligence

Rose Eveleth writes at Scientific American:

Researchers have long considered the majority of those affected by autism to be mentally retarded. Although the numbers cited vary, they generally fall between 70 to 80 percent of the affected population. But when Meredyth Edelson, a researcher at Willamette University, went looking for the source of those statistics, she was surprised that she could not find anything conclusive. Many of the conclusions were based on intelligence tests that tend to overestimate disability in autistic people. "Our knowledge is based on pretty bad data," she says.

This hidden potential was recently acknowledged by Laurent Mottron, a psychologist at the University of Montreal. In an article in the November 3 issue of Nature, he recounts his own experience working with high-functioning autistic people in his lab, which showed him the power of the autistic brain rather than its limitations. Mottron concludes that perhaps autism is not really a disease at all—that it is perhaps just a different way of looking at the world that should be celebrated rather than viewed as pathology.

See Edelson article here.

See 2008 Wired article here.

Opposition to an Education Bill

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities is opposing provisions in S. 1571, legislation by Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA). Here are excerpts from the group's letter to the Senate HELP Committee:

While everyone agrees that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) needs revisions, certain key provisions have created a greater level of transparency about the achievement of our nation’s students and must remain as a part of ESEA. One such provision, about which there is widespread agreement, is subgroup accountability; namely, the requirement that states, districts and schools disaggregate data by specific categories of students, including students with disabilities. This disaggregation includes participation in, and performance on, state assessments and graduation rates. This disaggregation requirement has provided information about student participation, achievement and graduation that is critical to students, parents, educators and communities. Access to these data – and the accountability provisions that accompany it – has resulted in greater emphasis on student populations that have traditionally been underserved. While gaps remain, this progress has been important and must continue. Unfortunately, if enacted, S. 1571 would reverse much of this progress. Thus, the undersigned groups urge you to reconsider the policies in S. 1571 because they will negatively affect students with disabilities in the following areas:

This legislation would allow states to administer different assessments – either an alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standards or an alternate assessment based on modified academic achievement standards – to any number of, or quite possibly all, students with disabilities. For purposes of accountability, it is important to note that both of these alternate assessments are different from the general education assessment. This is important because when a student with a disability takes a different assessment than a student without a disability, there is no way to compare their performance, no way to accurately measure achievement gaps and no way to know how well they have grasped the grade-level content. If large numbers or possibly all students with disabilities are given alternate or modified assessments, we will effectively – and under the proposed language – legally create a separate education system for students with disabilities.