Schools’ special education efforts on right track

Deirdre Newman

NEWPORT-MESA -- School district officials said they won’t have to

scramble to comply with a federal ruling that provides special education

students extra help on the high school exit exam because the ruling

mirrors their ongoing efforts.

The ruling, handed down Thursday, allows students to use modifications

such as a calculator and spell-checker and will require portions of the

test to be read aloud if these things are already part of a student’s

individual education plan. The plan is basically a road map for each

special education student that details how he or she can attain specific

goals.

Before the ruling, the modifications were not allowed without a

special waiver because they alter the test’s intention.

“If it even helps one student, it would be a good thing,” said Peggy

Anatol, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s director of curriculum

assessment.

The exit exam will be taken early next month by sophomores and are a

prerequisite for graduation for the class of 2004 and beyond.

The ruling meshes with district efforts started last fall that

evaluate the needs of special education students to see what

accommodations and modifications will enable them to have a better chance

at success when taking various state tests. In addition to evaluating

whether the students will need certain accommodations during the exit

exam, the new plans also call for more accountability with state

standards.

“One of the thrusts is to have standards-based goals and objectives

written into the [education plan],” said Patrick Ryan, the district’s

director of special education. “We’re not just noticing that Susie has a

reading disability in the area of understanding the main idea. We are now

talking about what Susie will be learning in their 10th-grade English

class and how that relates to the core curriculum.”

The new plans also stress that accommodations necessary during testing

be incorporated into the students’ entire learning process, Anatol said.

For instance, if there is a list of 15 presidents’ names that students

need to know for a test and their educational plan recommends breaking

the list into chunks, then this method should be used throughout the year

to help these students absorb information, Anatol explained.

The ruling also directs the state to develop an alternate test to the

exit exam for students who are too disabled to take the existing format.

The court has not yet decided whether federal law requires the state

to treat scores achieved with certain modifications the same way it

treats scores by students without them. The district has 1,548 special

education students.

* Deirdre Newman covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at o7 deirdre.newman@latimes.comf7 .