Sisyphean tasks: the reams of paperwork that currently serve as special education's accountability" system distract from the practice of teaching and learning. It is time to focus on results - Forum - focus on special education in the Baltimore, Maryland public school system

Education Next, Wntr, 2003 by Patrick J. Wolf

A results-based accountability system in special education would have the following specific features:

* Every student's IEP would set forth clearly: 1) what skills and knowledge the student is supposed to acquire; 2) over how long a period; 3) what specific tests would be used to measure those skills; and 4) with what specific testing accommodations.

* The tests and accommodations for each student would be applied consistently, year after year, for all students with nondegenerative disabilities.

* The process would begin with a set of baseline tests to measure initial levels of ability and achievement soon after the student has been diagnosed with a disability.

* Subsequent results would be reported as gains or losses from that baseline, noting also whether the outcomes exceed, meet, or fall short of the benchmarks established in the IEP.

* Reports also would include narratives from the teachers, counselors, and administrators who are educating the student, in order to place the gains or losses in context.

* Evidence of aggregate declines in the performance of the special education students in a given district would lead to a state or federally led intervention involving supervised programmatic changes.

* Persistent performance declines or a chronic failure to achieve sufficient progress at the individual, school, or district level would enable the parents of special education students to enroll their children in another public or private school of their choosing, with each child's entire per-pupil spending (regular and special education) following her to the chosen school.

Two elements of this proposal stand out. First, using gain scores along with benchmark achievement assessments is critical. Special education students are, well, "special." They exhibit various handicapping conditions of varied severity that affect their educational ability and achievement. By using the metric of student-specific academic gains instead of a somewhat arbitrary standard of achievement to evaluate special education students, the system would automatically control for a number of preexisting conditions that are particular to each student.

The use of gain scores also minimizes the incentives for classifying a nondisabled student as disabled, since such scores measure individual progress instead of lowering the achievement bar. A school with a 3rd grade student who was never taught to read would not be able to excuse itself of responsibility merely by classifying the child as learning disabled and providing him with "services." If the school adopted that dubious approach under a results-based accountability regime, the student's current ability level would need to be assessed and the school would be required to demonstrate that the child was making adequate yearly progress as determined by an annual assessment using the same testing accommodations. The school still would have to teach the child to read or face the consequences. Moreover, the gain-score results generated from the annual testing program would provide valuable feedback to educators regarding which LD students are responding favorably to interventions tailored to the special needs of LD students and which are not (and therefore may not really be LD). An inaccurate diagnosis of LD therefore becomes a liability to a school, where it might once have served as a cop-out.