ShareThisBy CHERI CARLSON
Scripps Howard News Service
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Rigo Corona doesn't put too much stock in annual achievement tests.
Each spring, students go through days of Standardized Testing and Reporting, taking the STAR exams developed to measure their knowledge of academic standards.
Students' scores determine whether schools meet federal requirements set by the No Child Left Behind Act. Their scores also determine schools' state academic rankings.
But for Corona, the tests simply mean that his third-grade son, Albert, will come home from school tired and frustrated. Albert attends a program for hearing-impaired children at Loma Vista School in Ventura, Calif. Last year, he and his classmates sat through six days of tests, only to find out months later that their scores wouldn't be counted.
Their teachers used sign language to give them the test questions -- a modification that the school and parents said the children "rightfully and legally" deserved. Deaf children, who can't learn language skills by hearing, typically fall behind grade level in reading, they said.
California officials, however, decided that the use of sign language invalidates the scores on reading, language and spelling tests.
This month as students throughout Ventura County take the 2007 exams, 20 families in the Loma Vista program opted to have their children sit out STAR testing.
"It's hard for the kids to try and do something they have had little or no exposure to," Rigo Corona said. And after their test scores were thrown out, he added, the exercise seemed even more futile.
No Child Left Behind requires that all students, including those with disabilities, participate in the annual achievement tests.
Some special-education students -- up to 1 percent with the most significant cognitive disabilities -- take an alternate exam not tied to grade-level content. But all other students, including the hearing-impaired, are required to take the same test, based on grade-level standards.
The U.S. Department of Education recently released regulations designed to change that. They allow states flexibility to create a "modified assessment" for special-education students to master the same grade-level standards but take an easier test.
The modified assessment will be available for a yet-unidentified "small group" of students whose disabilities prevent them from meeting targets. Changes could include larger print, three answer choices instead of four, and teachers allowed to read test questions to students.
But no one knows exactly how the changes will be put into practice, according to Jan Chaldek, California's STAR manager. A blueprint is being considered by the state Board of Education. After its approval, the modified exam must be developed and tested. At the earliest, a new, modified assessment for elementary grades would be ready in spring 2008.
While local educators said they would welcome a modified assessment, Ron Moon, pupil-services administrator for the Oxnard School District, said he thinks that No Child Left Behind has helped raise expectations in some special-education classes.
"Many of us are glad to see special-education students in a situation where the bar is raised," Moon said. "The question is: Has it been raised so far it's not achievable?"
He discourages the use of modifications in Oxnard schools because those tests automatically are given failing grades, but, he said, the new modified assessment, if approved, could be a solution for those students allowed to take it.
(Contact Cheri Carlson of the Ventura County Star in California at www.venturacountystar.com.)
