Opposition to the NCLB legislation has begun around America, as principals, school board members, and Department of Education officials who have for decades been hiding, harassing, discharging and not testing children with special needs at all ends of the spectrum find that they are not allowed to do this anymore. Educrats are 'blaming' children for not reaching their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), losing funding or teachers because these kids now must be accounted for, and in general disrupting the life of the school and/or classroom. In other words, we believe that many educrats found life was easy when these kids could be discarded, not tested, locked up, or ignored with impunity.

Anyone who joins the many yahoogroups listservs available, as we have, can see the illegal actions educators are taking throughout America. With one email we can chat with more than 300,000 people, mostly parents, at the same time. Most of these parents are taxpayers and voters, activists, and potential plaintiffs, joined by an increasing number of psychologists, evaluators, and former Committee on Special Education members, who just cannot go with "The Plan" anymore. There are thousands of whistleblowers out there.

When the information about one teacher hitting a special needs child in North Dakota is read by a mom in Florida, the outrage is the same. We have all heard about cassette tapes, videos and newspapers (yes, even newspapers!) galvanizing major change in government policy. This is, we believe, what is going on, and we are dedicated to this e-revolution.

But first we must remind our school administrators that children with special needs are their students, too, deserving of a free and appropriate education, and that changes mandated by NCLB are, in the end, good for everyone.

Betsy Combier

Schools can be shackled by their weakest links
Jenny LaCoste-Caputo, San Antonio Express-News Staff Writer, October 3, 2004

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How's this for a math problem: Fifteen percent of the 1,100 children enrolled at Krueger Middle School are special-education students, but federal officials allow only 1 percent of a school's population to take an alternative state achievement test.

"This is our 1 percent," Debbie Tschoupe, Krueger's curriculum coordinator, says as she opens the door to a classroom where most children are in wheelchairs, some don't speak and all are profoundly disabled.

How to test the rest of the special-ed students is a dilemma, one that eats at Texas schools trying to meet the standards of No Child Left Behind, President Bush's controversial education-reform law.

The stakes are high, with many schools standing to lose students, money and autonomy for failing to meet federal standards because too many of their students fail the test.

Though the law requires virtually every child to pass a standard test despite disabilities, teachers say giving special-education students the same exam everyone else takes sets them up for failure.

But, as many Texas schools discovered last week when state education officials released testing data, giving special-education students a different test doesn't help.

Almost 200 Texas schools landed on the federal "needs improvement" list this time, many failing federal standards because the U.S. Education Department wouldn't allow the scores of thousands of special-education students who took a different test.

In fact, nearly 9 percent of Texas students were automatically counted as failures because they took an alternative test, as state law provides.

If enough children in a school fail, the entire school fails. In San Antonio, where 25 schools failed to make adequate yearly progress for two years in a row, educators say it was the special-education requirement that made the difference.

"The whole campus gets labeled because of the performance of one small group of kids," said Phyllis Hickey, the principal at Krueger, where special education test scores caused the school to fail federal standards for this year. "That's not fair."

That small group is a school's most fragile population. Some special-education students are in high school and are reading on a second-grade level. Others are emotionally handicapped middle-school students who have a hard time coping in a classroom.

A smaller percentage comprises children who are autistic or have other serious disorders that rob them of the ability to walk or speak.

These are the children who present the biggest challenge to teachers. They learn differently, communicate differently and achieve differently.

Testing requirements have spawned a drastic change in the way Krueger serves these students. This year the school will give the same test to virtually all its students-that is, all except the 1 percent who are most profoundly disabled-with the school doing its best to prepare them.

What's happening at Krueger, the story of one school's battle to meet federal standards, is Texas writ small. Krueger is trying a new approach to teaching special-education students. Principal Hickey asked teachers to team up, with one subject specialist and one special-education teacher in the same class.

Special-education kids who used to take math and reading classes isolated from other students and on a lower grade level now share the same class with their peers. Hickey hopes the team approach to teaching will ensure every child gets the best possible help.

She's also giving a "double dose" to kids who need it in math and reading. If it means rejecting physical education in the afternoon for an extra math class, so be it.

"We really think we can do this," Hickey said. "We plan to make it this year."

Krueger special-education teachers are enthusiastic about the changes. They believe many of their students can perform on grade level if pushed hard enough. Already, other school districts are calling the school to find out about the plan and discuss its chances for success.

"I'm excited about the chance to do something new and creative," special ed teacher Michael Ansley said. "This has forced us to change and meet this head-on."

Judith Higgins, Northeast's executive director for special education, agrees.

"A lot of people want to rail against No Child Left Behind and say it's not right. It's not fair. It's not possible," Higgins said. "I say, maybe it is possible. If we put our energy into saying yes we can, maybe we will."

Higgins fully believes Krueger will meet the federal standards for this school year, partly because the school missed the mark so narrowly last year.

If they don't meet the requirement this time, the consequences can be dire.

Schools on the list of those failing must allow parents to transfer their children to a different school, with the home school paying for transportation. Each year the school fails the federal benchmarks, called "adequate yearly progress," the sanctions escalate.

In the second year, schools have to pay for extra tutoring from an outside vendor. In the third and fourth years, staffers may be replaced and the principal's authority taken away. By the fifth year, the state could take over the school entirely.

Standards also escalate. By 2013, the federal government expects 100 percent of students to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and math.

Despite Higgins's self-described "Pollyanna" attitude toward the law, even she admits there are schools that have such a large population of children with special needs that it may be impossible for them ever to meet the federal criteria.

"The hammer in No Child Left Behind is pretty big," she said. "If something doesn't change in the law, it's going to have a huge effect on some schools."

Higgins' boss, Northeast Superintendent Richard Middleton, wonders if a change to the education reform will have to come through a legal challenge.

Middleton is spurring the new special-education initiatives at Krueger, vowing to change the way his district approaches special education. But while he's bound to abide by No Child Left Behind, he wonders if it violates the federal act that has been the foundation for educating children with disabilities for nearly 30 years: the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

IDEA stipulates all children with special needs will have an individual education plan that sets goals during the school year and guides a child from the time he or she is identified as special ed through graduation. A team of people, including the child's parents and teachers, meet regularly to track progress and make any modifications if necessary to the plan.

"I believe in a few years we're going to see lawsuits over this," Middleton said. "It violates the rights of children guaranteed under IDEA."

Though special ed teachers at Krueger overwhelmingly support the changes to the program and are excited to see if their students will meet higher expectations, the label of failing and the sanctions that come with it still sting. Parents just now are receiving letters telling them of the right to transfer to another school. Hickey has no idea how many will take advantage of it.

In a Krueger special-education class on Friday, a seventh-grade boy whispered to his friend across the aisle, "Hey, are you going to Garner?" Garner Middle is the school Krueger students can opt to transfer to. "My mom said we can go there because this school is doing bad."

That's the myth Hickey is trying to debunk - that the federal rating means her school is "bad."

"That's the toughest part," she said. "But I really believe that when it's all over and the dust settles, Krueger will be better off than when we started."

Krueger special-education teacher Gary Kernodle doesn't disagree with the changes to the special ed program, or the possibility that his students may be capable of more than what they've been doing. But Kernodle doesn't believe that 100 percent of children can be proficient in every subject area.

If schools meet the mandate of No Child Left Behind, there will be no such thing as special ed.

Like the fabled children of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, every child will be above average.

"They will have legislated us out of existence," Kernodle said.