Arne Duncan Wants Special Education Students To Take General Exams:

Arne Duncan Wants Special Education Students To Take General Exams

Should students with disabilities be held to the same academic standards as their peers? And should schools and teachers be held accountable for their progress?

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan answered that question with a resounding yes, proposing a seemingly wonky regulatory change that could have profound effects on some of the nation's most vulnerable learners.

Since President Barack Obama came into office, his administration has upheld and advanced policies that have increased the stakes of standardized testing, arguing that student progress ultimately matters above all other concerns. Policies such as the Race to the Top competition derive from the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which tied federal school aid to standardized test results. A subsequent 2003 regulation allowed states to use "alternate achievement standards" for up to 1 percent of students with the most challenging cognitive disabilities.

In 2007, the Education Department tweaked the law to allow 2 percent of students per state to learn a curriculum based on "modified" objectives and be measured on an aligned test. The feds based that number on the "percent of students who may not reach grade-level achievement standards within the same time frame as other students, even after receiving the best-designed instructional interventions from highly trained teachers," the department wrote in the Federal Register. States could use the modified tests to measure student performance of these 2 percent under No Child Left Behind.

Since then, a consortium of advocacy groups representing special education students, such as the Easter Seals and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, have pushed to end the allowance. "The expectation should be that students presently taking the ... [alternate exams] will participate in the general assessment, with appropriate accommodations as needed," the group wrote in July.

Now the Secretary of Education is responding to those pleas. On Friday, the