Gotcha!

We had a tough Cabinet meeting last week.  Not because of anyone around the table -- each of the administrators in EISD is absolutely super.  And not because of the climate -- Demetric brought breakfast, I made coffee, and Richard provided the entertainment!  And not because of any one issue, but a combination of compliance issues.  We're stuck.  I know we are stuck by design, but we remain stuck.

We are subject to both state and federal accountability standards.  We do not want to game the system, but if we don't, we will look terrible.   In fact, we have to really choose which accountability system we want to look good on and forgo the other.  Even doing that, we remain stuck and have no guarantees we will look OK.

The federal system is really beginning to kick our hind quarters.  By 2014 we must show 100% mastery of all kids.  I'm an optimist, and I believe in high expectations, but, 100%?  Really?  And, we must demonstrate this mastery on the state's assessment instrument.  Our new STAAR test will be much tougher than the TAKS test, which was much tougher than TAAS, which was much tougher than TEAMS, which was much tougher than TABS.  Other states use different tests, but most are similar to our TEAMS test way back when.  Not Texas.  In a time of reducing funding we have raised the standards.  Not a good scenario for improving outcomes.  And if that were not enough of a challenge, we now have a new sub-population to worry about:  students designated as "special education."

(First, a moral disclaimer:  I absolutely, totally believe in and support the education of all kids regardless of gender, ethnicity, income, height, weight, zip code or disability.  Every parent of more than one child knows there is no such thing as a "normal" kid.  "Normal" is setting on a dishwasher, not a label for kids.)

In 1975, Congress passed Public Law 94-142, Education of All Handicapped Children, now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.  I started teaching in school year 1973-74 and clearly remember the introduction of this federal legislation.  Frankly, we needed to do something back then.  Kids with physical, mental and learning disabilities were not served well in schools.  We lacked the training, the knowledge and the programs to help them.  Though some of the wealthier districts in Texas at that time had some programs that amounted to full-time child care, most disabled kids either simply stayed at home or were failed until they dropped out.  Schools were not built to be accessible to kids in wheelchairs. PL 94-142 changed all that with requirements to identify and serve special needs kids, and most importantly, provided federal dollars to do so.  New categories of certification emerged like Special Ed Teacher and Diagnostician, and whole new departments emerged in our bureaucracy called Special Services.  New rooms appeared in schools like "Resource", "Adaptive Behavior Units", "Life Skills", and "Severe and Profound."  A new school-within-school was born on every campus in the U.S., complete with staff, kids, rules, routines, and budgets.

For students with severe physical and mental disabilities we provided physical therapy, training in basic skills like cooking, going to the grocery store, washing clothes, or we simply kept feeding tubes cleaned.  Yes, we have nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists on the payroll.  We even send a teacher  to the home of some kids.  Students who were functioning fine, but had difficulties learning compared to other students, were labeled "learning disabled," and they were placed in special rooms with a special teacher to be taught math, English, social studies or science depending on their disability and their abilities.  Suddenly, what we had been calling "going to school" became "mainstreamed," that is, regular classes with regular teachers.

By 1985 things pretty well stabilized with this entirely new branch of public education and children who had previously been ignored, or even worse, shunned, were receiving services in our schools and improving their lot in life.  That is about the same time that the high stakes accountability testing movement began in Texas.  We found a fairly simple way to deal with children who had special needs:  we gave them a special test based on their disabilities and their level of performance.  A 5th grade child performing on the 3rd grade level in math and the 5th grade level in reading took a 3rd grade level math test and a 5th grade level reading test.  The new accountability culture had arrived and seemed to be reasonable and schools got better every year preparing all kids to do well on all tests.  (How we did that is another story.)

Enter "No Child Left Behind" in 2001.  This re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act under President Bush changed the game at the federal level.  Former Texas Governor Bush took the Texas accountability system to Washington, and by the time Congress was through with it, we had a mess, at least from the Texas point of view.  In Texas, we now had two accountability systems with which to measure our performance: the state system which continued to morph every two years when the state legislature met, and the new federal accountability system implemented under NCLB.  The two did not match.  They were not aligned.  The measure was the same, that is we used the state test whatever we called it that year to collect scores, but the grouping of the scores, the standards for the scores and the expected outcomes of the scores were different for the state system and the federal system.  That got much worse as of 2008 when the state leadership and the federal leadership were political enemies rather than allies.

The NCLB requires us to look at the performance of kids designated "special ed."  As of spring of 2011, so does the state system.  The problem is the federal system expects special ed kids to take on grade level tests.  If more than 2% of your kids take less than grade level tests, or modified tests, all the special ed. kids who take a modified tests above the 2% number are deemed "failures" even if they passed the test.  To do well on the state system, we are statistically encouraged to give kids the modified tests so that we can achieve higher labels, i.e. Recognized or Exemplary.  Large numbers of our special ed. kids take modified tests and do fine, but because we have more than the allowed federal 2%, we get nicked on the federal system  This escalates as the federal percentage of doing well on the test grows each year as we approach 2014 when we must hit 100%!  This year, Edna ISD was "Acceptable" on the state system, and the district and two of our 3 schools were unacceptable on the federal system, or Missed Adequate Yearly Progress - AYP.   And, the state system now counts special ed student performance as well.

The test a special education student takes is decided at the individual student's ARD and is written in his or her IEP.  (These acronyms came into existence in 1975 and are now so embedded in our lexicon that few remember not using them.)  We really want to do what is best for the kids.  We want to push them, but we do not want to set them up for failure either.  We refuse to simply say once 2% or 3% have an IEP that calls for a modified test we will not allow anymore.  That is ridiculous.  By the same token, we must refuse to simply say that if you carry a special education designation you will take a modified test.  That is equally ridiculous.  Regardless, one of the accountability systems, if not both, will be able to say, "Gotcha!"

The real problem, of course, is the arbitrary percentage cut off.  Given that, and the fact that all special needs kids must take a grade-appropriate test, we really feel set up.  Seems that no matter what we do we are caught in a structural Catch 22.  We will not tell a qualifying child that we will not provide services.  We will not assign a test that a student cannot possibly pass.  We will assign an appropriate test for every kid, and if the kid is on grade level in a subject and is receiving regular instruction in a subject, we will expect them, as we do every kid, to pass the test.

And, we will probably miss AYP again and may be accredited warned.  But, we will do what is right by kids.