No Child Left Behind & High-Stakes Testing: Focus on Special Education

In a recent episode of “The Daily Show,” host Jon Stewart asked U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “What’s going on with No Child Left Behind?”  

“No Child Left Behind,” the secretary declared, “is broken.” 

His abrupt epitaph for the G.W. Bush-era legislation strikes one as a bit paradoxical given that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) remains the law of the land and continues to have a profound effect on America’s public schools.

The bipartisan Act of Congress was designed to improve student outcomes by establishing high academic standards and annual standardized assessments. High-stakes testing remains perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of NCLB. Assessments are now in the forefront of most educators’ minds: There are high-stakes tests and tests to prepare for high-stakes tests. In Pennsylvania this past March, 15 of the 25 days that schools were in session were reserved for the annual administration of Pennsylvania System of Standardized Assessments.

NCLB is also known for some unachievable provisions, such as the requirement that 100 percent of students, including students with disabilities and disadvantaged students, reach the same state standards in reading and mathematics by 2014. The law has also become somewhat notorious for its use of punishment as a way to motivate school officials toward compliance.  Today, many, including the Obama Administration, perceive the law as a “barrier” to educational reform, the very outcome its enactment was supposed to have achieved.

The interface of NCLB with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is awkward and clumsy. 

The two laws fundamentally oppose one another. NCLB calls for standardization and accountability to reach common goals by all children, even those with disabilities. IDEA calls for an emphasis on the individual child with modifications and accommodations to the general education curriculum as designed and agreed to by a team of parents and educators through the Individualized Education Program process (IEP).

To many special educators, it appeared that special education was simply an afterthought during the passage of NCLB. There was astonishment and, in some cases, mild outrage among special educators at some of NCLB’s newly enacted provisions. How, for example, could children and youth with disabilities achieve the same academic standards as children without disabilities, when by definition children with disabilities are “unable” to perform commensurate with children without disabilities? Is it even feasible or ethical to submit children with disabilities to standardized grade-level assessments when those children are clearly unable to participate meaningfully? Federal legislators quickly began scrambling to align the two important pieces of legislation when IDEA came up for reauthorization in 2004.  

IDEA requires that states and local education agencies ensure that all children with disabilities are included in all general state and district-wide assessment programs. If necessary, a state or school district may create an alternate assessment. This provision may have been one of the first of many legislative retreats from the requirements of NCLB.

Over the years other “exceptions” to the legislation have been adopted. Changes have been wrought with regard to testing; there are now alternative tests and modified tests for children with disabilities.

There are revisions and exceptions to the “Highly Qualified Teacher” provisions. Each revision calls for modifications in test distribution and recording.  Workshops are conducted to keep teachers abreast of the ever-changing requirements.

“Michael George understands, better than most of his contemporaries, the inherent contradictions in No Child Left Behind. His voice is a necessary component of any serious conversation involving school reform and our nation’s special education community.”

Dean Gary M. Sasso, College of Education

Yet some things remain the same. In schools across Pennsylvania, including in my school for children with disabilities, students known to be functioning well below grade expectancy will be handed test booklets containing material at their chronologically appropriate grade level. They will be unable to answer a single question on any page in the test booklet.  They will be directed to “try hard” in accordance with the directions that accompany the assessment materials. 

As one special education teacher aptly put it, “We are asked to do something we ordinarily would never do.  It’s analogous to asking a child in a wheelchair to run the hundred-yard dash. Although we would never do that with a child having physical disabilities, when it comes to state assessments, that’s exactly what we are doing in many cases.”

Today, there appears to be a growing consensus that the legislation is in need of significant revisions. Despite nearly 10 years of implementation, myriad revisions, modifications, “retreats” and ongoing assessments, there is little empirical evidence to suggest that NCLB, the law that demanded accountability, has been effective in achieving its outcomes. As stated in Homeroom, the official blog of the U.S. Department of Education:

“The act’s emphasis on test scores as the primary measure of school performance has narrowed the curriculum… at the expense of important subjects such as history, civics, science, the arts and physical education… and the one-size-fits-all accountability system has mislabeled schools as failures even if their students are demonstrating real academic growth. The law is overly prescriptive and doesn’t allow districts to create improvement plans based on their unique needs. It also has not supported states as they create teacher evaluation systems that use multiple measures to identify highly effective teachers and support the instructional improvement of all teachers. Unfortunately, the law is unintentionally creating barriers for these reforms.”

Sadly, after 10 years of effort on the part of school officials, the only clear “winners” when it comes to NCLB are the test developers and corporations that produce the mandated assessments. Some might argue that the federal government is also a beneficiary of the law in that NCLB further shifted authority for making decisions about education from local school boards to the state and federal governments, a process begun many years ago under the Reagan presidency with the introduction of A Nation at Risk.

Left unsaid by Secretary Duncan in his appearance on “The Daily Show” was precisely when government officials came to the unsettling conclusion that NCLB was broken and needed a fix. Public school officials have known that for many years.

—By Michael George, Director of the Centennial School in Bethlehem, Pa.

George Testifies Before Congress to Limit Seclusion & Restraint

Dr. George testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in Washington, D.C.

Michael George, director of the Centennial School of Lehigh University’s College of Education, recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in Washington, D.C. regarding legislation that limits seclusion and restraint of students.

Under the provisions of the Keeping All Students Safe Act, students can only be secluded or restrained if they act in a way as to pose a clear and present danger to themselves or others in the school setting. By employing positive behavioral teaching approaches and working to establish a relationship with students that make school environments fun and engaging, George testified that the Centennial School has been able to do away with archaic forms of discipline.

“I hope my testimony heightens awareness of the issue of seclusion and restraint in this country and illustrates the benefits of positive behavioral approaches for working with children and youth who have problem behaviors,” says George, who has worked at the Centennial School since 1998.