gor, but if you’re going to teach kindergarten to fourth grade one way, you’re going to have to go back and reteach the other methodologies before diving in at fifth grade with a whole new approach,” said Herrle.
As for self-contained classrooms, Herrle doesn’t believe segregating special education students from their general education peers is the answer, either. Federal law requires schools to educate students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment, or exposing special-needs children to their non-disabled peers as much as possible.
“It’s a huge step back for him, but he isn’t getting the proper scaffolding in his current classroom,” said Herrle. “We’re overhauling the plane in mid-air. My son doesn’t fit into this one-size-fits-all model, so what are we going to do with him?”
Looking ahead, Herrle worries that large numbers of students with disabilities won’t graduate. During a recent school board meeting, she asked administrators to reevaluate the Common Core’s impact on special education students. “If my son, who is more than capable of being a producer in our economy, doesn’t get a high school diploma, he will be receiving services, with your children footing that bill. It will bankrupt our economy, when all of these children can’t support themselves.”
Across New York State, many parents were stunned by last summer’s release of the first test scores aligned to the Common Core. Among students in grades three to eight, only around 30 percent demonstrated proficiency in English and math. Children with disabilities fared worse. Statewide, just 5 percent of students with disabilities were proficient in English, with 7 percent proficient in math.
On Long Island, which has 124 school districts,more than 20,000 students did not take this spring’s English and math exams. Though entire districts can’t opt out of state-mandated testing, individual parents can sign waivers allowing their children to refuse the exams.
Parents in districts separated by only a few suburban streets reacted very differently to 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