New Regulation Gives Districts More Flexibility to Meet AYP Requirements
for Students with Disabilities

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today announced a new provision of
the No Child Left Behind education reform law that will give local
school districts greater flexibility in meeting the act's requirements
for students with disabilities. The Secretary made the announcement at a
press conference with Special Olympics founder Eunice Shriver, House
Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner and students
with disabilities, their parents, relatives and teachers.

Under final rules published in today's Federal Register, states, school
districts and schools will have the flexibility to count the
'proficient' scores of students with the most significant cognitive
disabilities who take assessments based on alternate achievement
standards. Without this flexibility, those scores would have to be
measured against grade-level standards and considered 'not proficient'
when states measure adequate yearly progress (AYP).

Under the rule, which goes into effect on January 8, these students
would be tested against standards appropriate for their intellectual
development and, for accountability purposes, their scores would be
counted as part of their school's performance.  The intent is two-fold:
to protect children with disabilities from being excluded from
accountability systems that provide valuable information to parents and
educators and to ensure that schools receive credit for the progress of
all children.  The number of "proficient" scores counted for adequate
yearly progress (AYP) may not exceed one percent of all students in the
grades tested (nearly nine percent of students with disabilities),
although states may appeal for a higher limit if they can demonstrate
that they have a larger population of students with the most significant
cognitive disabilities.  Individual schools are not subject to the
one-percent cap as it applies only to district and state accountability
decisions.

The accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind require school
districts and schools to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP), the
minimum level of improvement that must be met every year. In technical
terms, AYP refers to the percentage of students who must reach the
state's definition of academic proficiency each year in order for all
students to be proficient by 2013-14. States must specify annual
objectives to measure the progress of all students, including specific
subgroups of students-defined by poverty, race and ethnicity, disability
and limited English proficiency-in order to ensure that every child
reaches proficiency in reading and math by 2013-14.

This year, for the first time, every state is required to publicly
report which schools have not made AYP.

"For some students," Paige said, "'proficiency' may look a lot different
than it does for other students, but frequent assessments of progress
meeting state standards are an important part of the educational process
and no student should be excluded.

Instead, he said accommodations such as increased time or the use of
assistive technology can be provided to ensure the unique needs of
children with disabilities are taken into account as they participate
with their peers in the assessment process.

The new rule does not limit how many students can be tested with an
alternate assessment; it limits only the number of scores based on
alternate achievement standards that can be included as proficient in
AYP measurement calculations. The new guidelines still call for the
alternate achievement standards to be tied to state academic content
standards.

The new provision was originally proposed by the department and
published in the Federal Register on March 20.  CEC provided extensive
comments to the proposed regulation; in all, about 100 comments were
received from local school officials, parents and others, and were
reviewed as part of the process leading to the development of the final
regulations.

A significant change from the proposed regulation is the elimination of
a definition of students with significant cognitive disabilities.
Rather, states will define this group of students.


To access the final regulations, go to:

http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/finrule/2003-4/120903a.html
or
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo
.gov/2003/pdf/03-30092.pdf