This past summer, the U.S. Department of Education announced
an overhaul to the evaluation metrics used to judge the effectiveness of
special education programs for students with disabilities who receive services
through an Individualized Education Program (IEP). In announcing the new
accountability framework, dubbed Results-Driven Accountability (RDA), Secretary
Arne Duncan repeated the oft-heard rhetoric behind other accountability-based
policy shifts under his tenure, saying, “We know that when
students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to the
general curriculum in the regular classroom, they excel. We must be honest
about student performance, so that we can give all students the supports and
services they need to succeed.” Of course, “being honest” entails evaluations
based on standardized test results, including state assessments and the NAEP.
The problem with this, according to
many experts in the field of special education, is that standardized tests
like the NAEP are horribly inaccurate measures
of learning outcomes for students with disabilities and often produce more negative
consequences than they seek to resolve. IEPs are
developed based on a student’s individual
developmental and skill level by a team composed of the student, parents,
teachers, and special education service providers. They are developed after
taking into account multiple perspectives and assessments tailored to the individual student. The student then
spends the next year progressing towards goals crafted to develop her individual academic needs. To then judge
the effectiveness of the academic program working towards meeting those needs
through a test that takes none of the students individual needs into account, and is instead standardized and
administered by grade level, makes absolutely no sense.
Supporters of standardized testing
adopt the language of disability rights advocates in arguing
that exempting students with disabilities from the same tests their peers are
taking for no other reason than the student’s disability status is
discriminatory. Testing proponents point to studies claiming that excluding
students with disabilities from standardized testing has the effect of
increasing overrepresentation as school staff push low-performing students into
special education to shield their school from the negative consequences of
test-based accountability (for examples of this body of research, see here,
here,
here,
and here).
These arguments, however, miss the point entirely. Testing advocates misappropriate
research that is an indictment of test-based accountability to serve their
cause. The research cited above does not conclude that excluding students with
disabilities is unjust, but rather that test-based accountability schemes
create perverse incentives to further marginalize students who do not perform
well on tests. There is no evidence this marginalization of low-performing
students will end by forcing students with disabilities to take these tests and
then judging their teachers based on the results. Further, recent attempts to
compel students with profound disabilities to take standardized tests exemplify
how “disrespectful”
the process can be.
The pushback against RDA should not
been seen as an argument against measuring learning outcomes for students with
disabilities. Instead, the argument here is for individualized assessments
tailored to the goals in a student’s IEP, which is something that a
standardized test is incapable of doing. If the concern is improving the
education of students with disabilities, then the focus should be placed on
addressing teacher shortages that help create illegal
caseload sizes in many states, making sure
schools––especially charter schools––are providing
a continuum of services, and improving professional
development so more
students have access to evidence based supports,
amongst other urgent areas of need. However, to proceed in this way would be to
admit there are at least some areas where standardized tests are inappropriate
and ineffective, and many of the barriers to student learning have nothing to
do with being held to “high standards” and access to a rigorous curriculum tied
to state or federal assessments, as Secretary Duncan claims. Such an admission
and reversal of policy can serve as a demonstration that the current
administration sees improving the education for all students as more important
than an unwavering adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy.
by Ian Scott
Ian Scott is a PhD student in the program on Education Policy and Social Outcomes. His research interests center on the impact of incentivist and market-based education reforms on special education programs and access to mental health services in schools. His work attempts to answer broader questions about how social perceptions of difference are legislated, problems of distributional politics, and the political economy of education.
