First of all, I just want to note that this was a "bi partisan" bill. It's not "the current administration" like someone else mentioned. This was Ted Kennedy's bill if you recall.
Also, having spent the last 2 years on the School Site Council, listening to what all these testing #s mean and also talking with teachers, all of our teaching is standards based and they do not do any prep work for the CA State testing. It's all like the other parent said "Make sure your kids get a good nights sleep and eat breakfast". Also I have heard our principal say over the loud speaker for everyone to do their best and not to worry about the test. My daughter is about one grade level behind in reading and did not meet every standard in math this year, so I'm sure she did not score well on the test, but no one at school seems to care about that too much. They just feel that it is another hoop to jump through and would rather spend their time teaching rather than test taking, but they do teach the standards and say that as long as they teach what kids are supposed to learn at each grade level they will do fine on the test. And we are a school that has generally not done super well on their test results, because we have a lot of English Learners, and a lot of parents who don't do much of anything to support their kids with homework, but we also have a lot of intervention programs going on so that the kids can learn.
One thing I questioned with my daughter in special ed is that her IEP goals were so low and they could have been higher. I don't expect her to be at grade level in every subject, but it seems as if they set some of her goals as if she can only learn about a half year's worth of material in a year. Like her addition and subtraction goal. Her baseline was that she could add single digit numbers, so her goal was to add double digit without regrouping. Why wouldn't they have said that the next step is to learn regrouping! Everyone else in her class was learning that, so she should have been learning that as well. I ended up teaching her that at home and on her report card the teacher commented "WOW, 3 digit addition with regrouping!!!" Why was this so amazing? I told them at the IEP meeting that she could learn that too and they didn't want to push her I guess. Yet, they hold her to the same standards as everyone else, but they don't even bother to teach it to her.
Anyway, as to the bill, I don't know all that much about it and how it relates to special ed students, but I'm with whoever said that they should be learning as close to grade level as possible. I do know that we had the option to not do the state testing, but I figured what the heck. I would rather her have spent the time with an SLP instead, but oh well.
One thing I noticed when it came to accomodations of the test is that every accomodation catered to kids with reading problems, like having things read to them. But when everyone was being read to, there was no accomodation for kids who have auditory processing problems, like allowing a child to have a copy of the directions to read to themselves if auditory processing was an issue. On the other hand, I don't think our state (CA) even aknowledges auditory processing disorders at all, so it's not surprising.
Kathryn
