U-S Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has announced changes in the No Child Left Behind act.
The changes are designed to make it easier for school districts to avoid federal sanctions under the 2002 law.
New Hampshire educators and school administrators say the changes give states more flexibility – especially for testing students with disabilities.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports.
Under the Federal No Child Left Behind law, students of all socio-economic backgrounds, and abilities have to pass standardized tests to prove they’re performing on grade level.
Students with severe cognitive disabilities have been able to take alternative tests to show they’re making progress.
But under the law, only one-percent of a school district’s population are allowed to qualify for the alternative tests.
U-S Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says that’s too restrictive.
In her first major policy announcement since her appointment, Spellings says states can now increase the number of students granted special accommodations in standardized testing.
"We know that there’s an additional about two percent of students who with additional time and the proper instruction and the proper kind of assessment can reach the accountability standards of no child left behind"
The change would allow some students to take tests specifically geared toward their abilities.
But the states have to show they have strong student accountability systems in place.
Dr. Alan Pardy, with New Hampshire’s Association of Special Education Administrators says the changes will help students who may have learning disabilities, but aren’t severely disabled.
"For those kids who’ve been struggling with the standards assessment it’s pretty important option for them because now they have a fair shot at showing progress and showing what they can do even though it’s not at grade level, this is recognition that some kids just don’t do well with standardized tests"
New Hampshire education officials haven’t determined how many students this could affect in the state.
Right now, more than 31-thousand kids in grades three through eight are considered special education students.
Less than 900 of them have applied to take an alternative test.
Virginia Irwin is with the Division of Instruction for the state education department.
She says individually assessing a lot more students could be an expensive and labor intensive undertaking for districts.
" A lot of states won’t be able to take advantage of this because of the shear numbers that they may end up with, so we need to take a look at what that means, we need to take a look at where are those kids now, are they one point away from making it or are they ten points away from making it. "
The U-S Department of Education is providing 14 million dollars and a so-called tool kit to help states identify and assess students with disabilities.
Irwin says it’s a step in the right direction compared to when the law first went into effect.
“It will be helpful to us too because you know when we started this No Child Left Behind, we didn’t have clear guidelines about what did that mean to alternately assess your kids, what are the standards that you can develop for measuring on a continuumâ€
The U-S Education Department’s policy change comes in response to state’s opposition to the federal law.
In the past two years, about 30 state legislatures have adopted resolutions that call No Child Left Behind an unfunded federal mandate that strips away states’ rights.
New Hampshire’s School Administrators Association was also highly critical of the law.
Executive Director Mark Joyce says what may seem like only a small change in policy, is actually fairly important.
"It’s significant in our mind because it is an action of a new secretary of education, we’re now in Bush’s second term, so I think it’s seen as a signal and a hopeful signal as some improvement."
Joyce says the Education Secretary’s changes are a first step in giving state’s more flexibility to reach the goals of No Child Left Behind.
The same issues were raised by us in 2002 and every year since and we were met by just utter resistance so to me it’s very encouraging that they’re being responsive.
Education Secretary Spellings says the ultimate goal of the changes is to put greater emphasis on outcomes, rather than focus on compliance with the law.
If New Hampshire decides to take advantage of the policy changes, they won’t take effect until the 2006-2007 school year.
That’s because the state is moving to a new testing program next year.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.
