Plan Would Codify Several Rules Adopted To Ease Testing of Students With Disabilities

Special education advocacy groups offered a mixed assessment of the effect a draft proposal for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act would have on students with disabilities.

Several provisions in the “staff discussion draft” released by the House Committee on Education and Labor on Aug. 28 would codify policies that the Bush administration put into effect through regulations. One such policy allows the state test scores of as many as 2 percent of all students—about 20 percent of students with disabilities—who take modified assessments to be counted as proficient under the law’s provisions on academic progress.

The draft would also codify an existing regulation that allows the scores of 1 percent of all students who take “alternate” assessments based on alternative standards to be counted as proficient. That provision is intended for students with severe cognitive disabilities, and would be equivalent to about 10 percent...