Abstract:

Despite what we know about good pedagogy and assessment practices, current national school reform efforts often focus on state testing performance to determine overall student achievement. Notably, the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) has established an educational accountability system that asks schools to report Adequate Yearly Progress (AYPs). AYPs are assessed using annual targets that include state test scores and graduation rates, which compares students, schools and states.

This case study focused on practices and policies that impact students with disabilities in light of NCLB and AYP targets. Criteria set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 identifies schools as Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) when they fail to meet their AYPs for three consecutive years. A number of public schools in a Northeastern state have been identified as PLA by the primary state education agency, because of consistently low state test scores and when applicable poor graduation rates. There is very little flexibility in this policy, especially as it interfaces with students with disabilities who are served under the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) in public schools. The majority of students with disabilities in the public sector often have mild educational needs and are thus asked to achieve at the same rate on these exams as their non-disabled peers. As can be assumed, students’ abilities to read and comprehend text, provide a written response of some kind, and/or perform mathematical tasks on these state measures can greatly affect schools overall performance in terms of meeting their AYPs.

Thus, the purposes of this case study are to 1) examine the historic context that determine PLA status for these schools; 2) investigate how schools respond to the PLA identification (e.g. establishes and executes a plan of action); and 3) explore various implications for students/families with disabilities, and the varied effects on teaching/administrative staff who serve them.

Keywords:

Special education, educational policies.