Are special needs ignored in effort to raise scores?

Scott Johnson’s third-graders at Mesquite Trails in Hesperia fold paper into geometric forms with ease — with the exception of a few students, including one little girl wearing a pink shirt and a puzzled look on her face.

“I don’t get it,” she says. She tries again and again, crumpling the papers into a pile as high as her frustration level.

Johnson believes she and a couple of other students in his class probably need special education services. But teachers like Johnson are being ignored when they voice their concerns.

“A lot of kids who need special attention don’t get identified and don’t get the help they need,” says Johnson. “In many cases they’re never referred to the Student Study Team (the first step in the identification process) when a teacher requests that they be tested. They are put in with all the other kids, and it’s sink or swim.”

Members of the Hesperia Teachers Association (HTA) believe the district is mixing special ed students with mainstream students so they will not constitute a “significant subgroup” and keep the whole school from making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind.

“A year and a half ago, teachers were told directly in a staff meeting, ‘Do not identify special education kids.’ They said it right out loud in public,” says HTA President James Pace. “This is coming from the district office. The reason given was that we do not want any significant subgroup in special education.”

In California, a numerically significant subgroup constitutes at least 15 percent of a school’s total pupil population and includes at least 50 pupils.

At Mesquite Trails, there are only 24 diagnosed special education students out of a total population of 727 students. And the district’s other 10 elementary schools also have too few special education students to constitute a “significant subgroup.” The closest would be Kingston Elementary, which has 49, just one short of significant.

Eight of the elementary schools made AYP last year. For those three that did not, special education students were not a factor.

Hesperia boasts higher API scores and a 64 percent decrease in the number of students who are classified as “special education eligible,” despite student population growth during the past decade.

Teachers believe the rising scores can often be attributed to special ed scores not being “disaggregated.”

Hesperia schools group children by ability as part of its ExCEL program, an “early intervention” program designed to meet every child at his or her individual level and avoid the need for special education.

“Many parents don’t know what’s going on,” says Pace. “We have a high percentage of English learners. And no matter how you present it, no parent wants to have a child with disabilities.” Parents are told their child is being grouped by ability instead of being labeled.

Each school has its own slightly different version of the ExCEL program, which groups students by grade level for language arts and math. Sometimes special education teachers teach these groups, which may include mainstream and special-needs children together. Other times, they’re taught by mainstream teachers, even though the teachers may lack the proper training to work with special education students.

The law requires schools to provide special education students with the “least restrictive environment,” but concerned teachers believe their district has gone beyond the law’s intent to the point where the students’ needs are often not being met at all.

“In many cases, students don’t have the services they need to be successful in a regular classroom,” says Pace.

At the district’s middle schools and high schools, the ExCEL program means special needs students may not get noticed for quite a while since teachers have up to 200 students in their charge, says Debby Shoemaker, a special education teacher at Hesperia Junior High.

Last year her school placed all students in the Resource Specialist Program (RSP) in regular classes with no pullout program unless they were among the lowest students in a special day class. “Those with mild to moderate disabilities are often on their own.”

After five years with the ExCEL program in effect in the district, secondary school teachers say they’re not impressed with the results.

“These kids are failing like crazy,” says Hesperia High School special education teacher Jim Garrett, referring to students who are moving up without having received special education services in elementary school.

Garrett, the union’s grievance chair, believes the 20 percent dropout rate for the two comprehensive high schools can at least partially be attributed to the ExCEL program.

This year the Hesperia ExCEL staff will train about 70 school districts in the U.S. and Canada in how to use the program. Last year the district helped implement the program in about 55 U.S. school districts.

This is part of a trend called Response to Intervention (RtI), which special education teachers fear may use special educators inappropriately, says Silvia L. DeRuvo, the immediate past president of the California Association of Resource Specialists and Special Education Teachers (CARS+). A member of the California Faculty Association, she teaches future special education teachers at CSU-Sacramento.

The RtI model, which evolved from the reauthorization of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), emphasizes early intervention and includes promising general practices for early intervention. But special educators are concerned that the bulk of the intervention responsibility will fall on their shoulders at the cost of time to support identified students.

Also, “when you don’t identify many special education students, you can reduce your special education staff,” says DeRuvo.

Because of the ExCEL program, Shoemaker believes she is underutilized as a special education teacher. “Honestly, I spend most of my day sitting in a regular classroom being used as an aide for any students who need help, not just special education students.”

“The Ed Code specifies the specific caseload for resource teachers and is very clear about what that caseload is,” says CTA Instruction and Professional Development Consultant Craig Nelson. “We’re advising local associations to demand to bargain the impact of these changes.”

While teachers are concerned about the impact of the ExCEL program on special education and mainstream teachers, they worry most about the impact on students whose needs are not being met. They fear that increasing pressure under NCLB will cause more school districts to use such programs to boost test scores.

When special education kids are being left behind, whether it’s by not testing them or by not placing them in an environment where they can get the proper help they need, “it seems that NCLB isn’t working,” says Garrett.

“I just feel like a lot of these kids are being lost."