An event so rare that it deserves its own blog post: Charlie points to a Washington Post article on NCLB and students with disabilities. The article argues that NCLB has forced schools to focus on disabled students because their scores are separately disaggregated and only a small fraction of students can be exempted. Before NCLB, too many state accountability systems had gaping loopholes that allowed these students to be ignored (for more, see here).
Of course, this brings us back to the NCLB incentives debate. If we credit the structure of the law when students with disabilities receive more attention, shouldn’t we look at the structure of the law when schools emphasize tested subjects? These are questions better answered by someone with a completed AERA paper...