DuPage districts question state tests

The girl in the wheelchair doesn't speak. Instead, she vocalizes a steady tone in a range of volume levels.

Her arms flail, the byproduct of involuntary muscle movements.

Beside her a teacher repeatedly - but patiently - asks a question about the correct use of the pronouns "she" and "her" in a sentence.

Eventually, the girl hits a button box used to indicate an answer. It was the wrong one. Her response is marked as incorrect.

It's unclear if her arm movement was intentional or just involuntary.

The profoundly disabled student's score, however, would still be registered as part of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.

The video of the exchange, part of a training tape for special education teachers, was shown to leaders around the area recently as an example of something some officials say is wrong with the state assessment.

Severely disabled students in all districts had to take question-and-answer tests for the first time in 2008. In the past, those children were measured against state goals based on classwork submitted from the school year that matched their individualized instruction.

And that's raised concern among some officials who say the test is inherently unfair to those children and can inaccurately skew a school's, or even a district's, overall performance.

"We have spent decades trying to develop Individual Education Plans (IEP) for students based on their needs. Then we want to assess them on a test that has no individuality included?" said Victoria Tabbert, superintendent in Queen Bee Elementary District 16.

"It offends me as a special educator by training, but also as a parent of a child with an IEP. What's the point of measuring something that's unrelated to what they need?"

In years past, students with severe impairments were graded another way. Their teachers assembled a portfolio of their coursework throughout the year to submit to the state as evidence of progress made on the individualized plan developed specifically for their special needs.

In 2008, though, the state said that all special education students - regardless of impairment - must take an appropriate grade-level test.

Districts that belong to the Legislative Education Network of DuPage have been working to explain the change to community members so they understand its effect on school scores.

"We don't think the 2007 and 2008 data is comparable," said Loren May, the superintendent in Marquardt Elementary District 15. He presented information this week about it to the Glenbard High School District 87 school board.

And they want people to know that when examining results, it's not only this group of special education students who had to take the test, it was also students who may not yet speak English.

All students in the process of learning English were required to take the state's test, too. In English.

Using the training video with the severely disabled student as an example, May said the state needs to return to a test for those children that's both accountable and accurate.

"Do you think the correct subjective pronoun is a reasonable piece of information (to ask), or do you really want to check on other things that will be relevant life skills for that student?" he asked.

Those same students, in the past, still were graded as not meeting, meeting or exceeding standards. It's just that the determination was based on what that student individually needed to learn.

May and others believe allowing that flexibility again for those children is not only more fair for them, but for the districts as well.