o the Common Core. Some supported the new standards; others mobilized to end them.
Last spring, Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann created Long Island Opt-Out, a Facebook group with more than 17,000 members. At more than 50 public forums she’s organized since September, Deutermann said she found that parents of children with disabilities are among the Common Core’s fiercest critics.
Some educators are equally concerned.
Roberta Gerold, the superintendent of Middle Country Central School District, described the Common Core-aligned assessments as a “one-sizes-fits-all program without a real recognition of the need to be attentive to individual needs.”
Gerold said she’s troubled by the premise that every child can learn at the same level, at the same pace and with the same depth, “no matter what level the child is at and whether they possess an extraordinary ability or are cognitively challenged.”
A quarter of Middle Country’s 10,500 students, a combination of regular and special education students, refused both tests, she said.
But Sonja Santelises, vice president for K-12 policy and practice at The Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works to close achievement gaps, sees a danger in large numbers of children with disabilities opting out of state tests.
Santelises sees real value in students with disabilities taking part, particularly during the early years of testing.
“It’s much easier in the early years of assessment to make the adjustments that need to happen,” she said.
Lindsay Jones, the director of public policy and advocacy for the National Center for Learning Disabilities, another Washington-based nonprofit, said the Common Core raised the bar on expectations for special education students, and her organization strongly supports that. She said that in the past, without those higher expectations, there had been a “huge underachievement problem.”
Nevertheless, Celia Oyler, a professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, is troubled by the uniformity she observes when visiting special education classrooms.
“Every child is being given the same materials at the same time,” said Oyler, who runs the Teachers College Inclusive Classrooms Project and directs the inclusive teacher education programs at the college. “The very essence of meeting the needs of children with disabilities is that learners need to be doing things at different times.”
During classroom observations, Oyler often finds teachers under the constant threat of scripted curricula, with every classroom expected to be on the same page, every day, no matter what.
“If you want students to be engaged in learning, they first have to feel successful at it,” said Oyler. “If a child has a third-grade reading level, they shouldn’t be given a sixth-grade book unless specific accommodations are carefully provided.”
Back in East Moriches, Charles Russo, who serves as both the district’s superintendent and also its elementary principal, advocates a balanced approach to the Common Core. Earlier this spring, only 10 percent of the district’s 750 students refused the statewide exams.
Russo has seen general education students—not just those with disabilities—bristle at the increased rigor.
“If we’re granting kids double time to take a test, why wouldn’t we grant them double time to learn the material?” asked Russo, referring to the testing accommodations many special education students receive when taking exams.
Russo views Papa’s classroom as a sort of Common Core laboratory. If he can show gains here, among seven of his most vulnerable students, the standards might work elsewhere.
Ultimately, he sees the success of the Common Core hinging on district-to-district rollout.
“We don’t have to have this all done this year,” Russo has said in faculty meetings. “I tell all of my teachers to adapt the work, to modify the work, to slow down. Get your students through it with fidelity and understanding and don’t worry if you don’t get it all done.”
Though he foresees special education students struggling with new material come testing time, he would