Testimony to the No Child Left Behind Commission
May 9, 2006
Hartford, CT

Secretary Thompson, Governor Roy E. Barnes, Commissioners

Good afternoon. I'm Jane Ross, executive director of Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing support to parents of children with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorders.

I am speaking on behalf also of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1977 that seeks to increase opportunities for children, adolescents and adults with LD to succeed in school, work and life. Together, we work with a national network of more than 33,000 parents, teachers and individuals with LD.

A discussion of the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind would not be complete without reviewing its impact on the more than six million students served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - 13.5% of the nation's public school enrollment - of whom one-half have specific learning disabilities.

According to the 25th Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the IDEA, in the 2000-2001 school year only 48% of students with disabilities graduated with a standard diploma, while 41% dropped out. Our organizations feel that these dismal results for special education students are due in large part to the lack of accountability for their progress.

While the IDEA mandates the provision of a free appropriate public education for students with disabilities, it contains no provisions setting high expectations and holding schools accountable for their progress. Prior to the enactment of No Child Left Behind, states failed to include many or most students with disabilities in their statewide assessment systems, despite a provision added to the 1997 reauthorization of the IDEA requiring them to do so.

Now, thanks to NCLB testing participation requirements, data collected by the National Center on Educational Outcomes over the past four years indicate a clear and dramatic improvement in the participation of students with disabilities in state assessments, attributable primarily to NCLB's AYP requirements for the subgroup of students with disabilities.

However, much work remains to be done. We ask the Commission to recommend that Congress:

(1) Maintain Special Education students as a subgroup under the NCLB, to ensure that we continue to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities.

(2) Continue the minimum participation requirements for subgroups associated with NCLB assessments. The recent National Assessment of Title I: Interim Report to Congress indicated that 14 states did not meet the minimum test participation requirement for one or more student sub-groups, with the lowest participation rates for students with disabilities.

(3) Look seriously at the issue of minimum subgroup size and its effect in excluding special education students from the accountability system. A recent study by the Center for Assessment found that increases in "n" size for the special education sub-group result in dramatically fewer schools being held accountable for performance. (Source: Effect of Minimum Cell Sizes and Confidence Interval Sizes for Special Education Subgroups on School-Level AYP Determinations, September, 2005).

Finally, we urge that any changes to the current accountability system maintain high expectations for improvement in the performance of students with disabilities toward proficiency, measured - except for a relatively small group of students - according to the same standards as all other students. Enhanced accountability will result in dramatic improvements in the performance of students with disabilities.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. We appreciate the work of the Commission.