Legislative Update

• The validity of the research cited as the basis for the policy as it relates to the population of IDEA-eligible students with disabilities. NCLD recognizes that research on effective reading interventions as well as the emergence of a "responsiveness-to-intervention" model of remediation for students with reading deficiencies has been most helpful in the deliberations related to the formulation of new federal education policies - both in the ESEA, such as Reading First, and IDEA, such as updating procedures for SLD identification.  But this research does not provide findings that support a dramatic federal policy change which will impact significant numbers of IDEA-eligible students, currently numbering 6.3 million.
  
  See Raising Achievement: Alternate Assessments for Students with Disabilities  for a discussion of the rationale and research on which this policy is based.
  
• The new policy will not encourage schools to address the most relevant influences on the performance of students with disabilities, which are lack of access to grade-level content, lack of early and effective scientifically-based interventions to remediate academic skill deficits, lack of access to highly qualified teachers qualified to teach core academic subjects, and lack of high expectations by special educators.
  
  See Why Students with Learning Disabilities Need No Child Left Behind  for additional information.
  
  
• Students, including those with learning disabilities, may be inappropriately assigned to participate in alternate assessments. Students who are not given the opportunity to participate in grade-level content and not held to grade-level expectations are more likely to lose opportunities to achieve grade-level proficiency and eventual graduation with a diploma. Several studies of states that have allowed students to be tested at their instructional level have shown that when schools do not get useful reports about these students, the schools tend to continue to do the same things instructionally, the students feel that the schools have given up on them, and a self-perpetuating cycle of low-expectations begins and continues. Students can be provided accommodations and technology to overcome barriers of poor decoding or computational skills, so that they can learn and master other grade-level skills and knowledge that challenge them appropriately.
  
• NCLB provisions currently offer school districts and schools a number of flexible ways for calculating AYP for subgroups, including subgroup "n" size, confidential intervals, safe Harbor, averaging proficiency data and waivers to exceed the 1% rule for students with significant cognitive disabilities.