EDITORIAL
Our Opinion: Calculating the best for special ed kids, schools
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Conflicting federal mandates on special education have teachers and students feeling like characters in Joseph Heller's "Catch 22."
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, these children must:
● Receive individual education plans.
● Be given whatever accommodations they need to learn, whether calculators, teachers to read questions aloud or someone to write answers.
● Be tested like other students and expected to make adequate yearly progress.
But during testing, these children get no special accommodations, not even calculators.
If they do use calculators on the tests, they're counted as not having been tested.
Those not tested all get scores of zero. The zero scores bring down the school's average. Then the school is cited as not making adequate yearly progress, which threatens its funding by labeling it a "failing" school.
Enough failing schools can result in an entire district being labeled a failure, too.
Ah, the havoc wrought by one Catch 22.
Now Tom Horne, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction, vows to ask the Legislature next year to let students use calculators during tests if their education plans call for it.
That's a swell idea, but it also has a catch. State and federal law are two different things, and today's schools have lost local control. They now answer to the federal government.
Horne shouldn't go to the Legislature. Rather, he and legislators should join with school districts statewide to implore our congressional delegation to push for sensible changes in No Child Left Behind.
Accountability can be a powerful concept. But if the measurements used aren't rooted in logic, then the entire movement of standards, testing and accountability loses its credibility, as does No Child Left Behind.
Students, schools and districts deserve requirements that are attainable when determination and rigorous academics are applied.
But when conflicting, nonsensical rules are imposed, everyone, most especially the student, is rendered powerless and thus has no reason to work harder.
Let's give everyone good reason. Let's eliminate the Catch 22s in federal and state educational policies.
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