A Grave Disservice

         Recently, I signed on to help coordinate volunteers for the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. I believe in the mission of the March to promote teacher, family, and community leadership in forming public education policy and curriculum; secure equitable funding for all public school communities; and end high stakes testing for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation and punishment.  What I enjoy the most about my new role is the opportunity to collect stories from public school educators around Virginia and help these educators turn their frustration into action as we prepare for the March.

         The following is an excerpt from an email written by special educator about the impact of high stakes testing (in this case the Virginia Standards of Learning exam, ironically given the official acronym SOL) on students with special needs. This teacher describes an experience with the VGLA, Virginia’s iteration of alternate assessment for special needs students.

“Each year the impact of the SOL tests seems to become worse and worse.  I work in a school that pretty much demands that special education students take the grade level alternate portfolios regardless of whether they ethically meet the criteria (meaning without doctoring the data) or should be assessed in that fashion.  With the change in documentation for students to talk the VGLA assessment, I found myself testing my students at an obnoxious and ridiculous level.  One of the criteria is that the students demonstrate that they do poorly on multiple choice tests.  Since my students actually did better on the multiple choice tests, my guidance counselor and principal continuously told me to keep testing until they fail the MC test.  That's nuts, and it's a symptom of life in a public school in the time of high stakes testing especially as more and more decisions are being based on the results of these tests.  

I've also read over and over from groups like Students First and many of their fans that teachers are the root of much of the evil in our children's education.  I'm tired of being vilified and demoralized.  I want to do my part.”

This teacher’s story is not unique.  Special education students are seen as an obstacle to schools trying to make AYP, rather than individuals who have a right to a quality education.  There is extreme pressure on schools to have students with special needs take an alternate assessment, typically a massive portfolio of student work samples accompanied by teacher evaluation.  Students are more likely to pass this type of assessment; therefore their scores will not have a negative impact on the school’s overall test results. With the enormous amount of work required to put the portfolios together, the burden to ensure they will pass review, and the increasing number of students in each special educator’s caseload, there is little time left over for the actual business of teaching.  In addition, a study from the University of Dayton found that states with the most punitive sanctions for schools that do not make AYP tend to place special needs students in more restricted settings, rather than finding the most appropriate and least restricted setting required by IDEA. 

Special educators are overworked, underpaid, and not given the autonomy to do what is right for their own students.  In emphasizing test results above all else, we are doing a grave disservice to all our children, especially those with special needs.