Federal law puts spotlight on often-neglected students

Sunday, November 02, 2003 • BY JOHN MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff

At Kittatinny Regional High School, what was noteworthy in a recent science class wasn't the usual bustle of students, but the calm.

Of the 20 students in the 10th-grade class, a dozen or so had learning disabilities. Yet with the help of some innovative software and a computerized blackboard known as a Smartboard, everyone in the room was paying rapt attention to a lesson on viruses and bacteria.

Marianne Chletsos, the district's special education director, said the technology helps engage the students. She pointed to one boy who typically might have his head on the desk. Instead he was tapping away on the laptop. Another student who is prone to distraction stood transfixed by the Smartboard screen.

"Some kids never did homework, but for this class they do it every night," she said. "It's fun, it's exciting for them."

The approach is part of the Sussex County district's push to integrate special education students into the rest of the school. It's hardly a new notion in American education but one that has suddenly seen new urgency in New Jersey and elsewhere.

Much of the impetus is the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal law that has shaken schools nationwide, especially in special education.

Under the law, schools must show steady improvements in performance among all categories of students, including by race and income. Those that fall short in just one of 40 categories are labeled as "needing improvement" and face potential sanctions.

New Jersey this fall alerted three quarters of its high schools and half of its middle schools that they are in jeopardy of such a label.

Special education was the chief sticking point for more than 500 middle and high schools in New Jersey identified by the state this fall as falling short of required achievement levels.

The number of schools that will fail because of special education is likely to rise. Consider this: Except for those with the most severe disabilities, every special education student -- from those with learning problems to the autistic -- will be required by the year 2014 to pass the same statewide test as general education students, albeit with modifications.

"I wouldn't say it wasn't academic before, but not necessarily to the same standards as other students," said Barbara Gantwerk, director of New Jersey's Office of Special Education Programs.

"People had lower expectations," she said. "But now everyone wants to know how these students do off the regular curriculum. That's a very different question."

That question has troubled educators like Chletsos, who say they have long pushed for meshing special and general education, or so- called "inclusion," but now wonder whether the expectations are too much, too soon.

Half of Kittatinny's special education students who took last year's state assessment passed, and the school has so far stayed off the state's long list of under-performing high schools as dictated by the new federal law.

But as those levels rise each year, Chletsos wonders how long her school will be spared.

"We have really enhanced how we access the regular curriculum for these students," said Chletsos. "But I'm not going to tell you we will do as well as with regular education students. You can't make someone 5-foot-8 suddenly 6 feet tall, no matter what."

The new federal mandates come to a state with a checkered history in special education.

Once a pioneer in recognizing the educational needs of disabled students, New Jersey more recently has been chided for falling short in ensuring those students are in the "least restrictive environment," as required under the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

About 45 percent of New Jersey's 220,000 students with disabilities were educated in mostly general education settings, near the average nationally, in the 2002-2003 school year. Yet that number has dropped slightly in the past five years. And New Jersey sends nearly 10 percent of its special education students to separate schools, by far the highest of any state.

But the No Child Left Behind Act has provided a new set of pressures, sending even high-performing districts scrambling.

In Hopewell Valley Regional schools, the early warning has already hit the high school. Special education teacher Heidi Olson in the Hopewell Elementary School worries what message that sends out at a time when rising special education costs are already straining the district.

Olson has worked for 17 years in both the elementary and high school levels, helping students with mild learning or behavioral problems to children with Down syndrome and autism.

"We really take the academics seriously, but my job is to prepare them not just in the academics but also for life," she said. "They will succeed, but they have to at their own rate and in a true sense of the word, not just passing a test."

By labeling a whole school as underperforming due to the results of those few students, "you are stigmatizing an already stigmatized population," she said.

Not all are lamenting the changes. The law wants to improve the education of special education students who too often have been moved along without learning even basic skills.

"I have had so many calls from parents, especially African-American parents, who say, 'Thank God for No Child Left Behind,'" said Diana Autin, co-director of the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network. "After being shunted aside all of these years, they say, 'Now my child counts.'"

Autin and other parent advocates have their concerns with the federal law, especially because it provides little new funding for special education. But she said it is bringing needed attention to instruction that now is inconsistent across the state, especially in the area of reading.

"A majority of special education kids are learning disabled, most in the area of reading, but are often really smart kids," said Autin. "For a vast majority, it is not a matter of intelligence or intellectual capacity. This law will encourage districts to think more about how bring appropriate services (for those students) into the classroom."

Lost in all the attention over No Child Left Behind has been the pending reauthorization of IDEA, the landmark special education law first enacted in 1975.

Now being debated before the Senate, the Bush administration has proposed to revamp much of that law, including scaling back the reams of safeguards and other procedures that surround a child's education program, called the Individualized Education Plan.

The amount of paperwork and time required in this planning has been a common complaint of districts and educators, some saying it often takes away from the programs themselves.

Yet parents who count on the IEP process to ensure students are receiving required programs have countered that many of the proposed IDEA changes would weaken those protections.

Under a bill already passed by the House, for instance, schools and parents would have the right to move to three-year IEPs, instead of the current annual IEPs, and advocates say the schools would be less accountable for making shorter-term goals.

Discipline procedures that require schools to take into account a student's disability before a long- term suspension could be gutted. Parent due-process rights would be reduced.

With the largest special education population in the state, Newark's director of special education, Larry Ashley, said there is fine balance to strike in both this and the No Child Left Behind changes. But either way, he said the heightened attention is good.

"I think a lot of this is overdue," said Ashley, the special education director in Millburn before coming to Newark last year. "It forces us to focus on what counts, and maybe some people don't like that. But there is accountability in business and the medicine, why not here, too?"