🚀 go-pugleaf

I thought folks might find this article of interest.  While it is a bit off
the topic of this article I find the final quote from a mother in this
article interesting.  She says she thinks everyone should take tests on
computers but I've seen a lack of progress in making testing software
accessible to people who are blind.  As I said that point is a bit off
topic but is something that needs more effort.

Kelly


Tuesday, February 23, 1999
Lawsuit Spotlights Battle Over Basic Skills Testing
 Education: Exams unfair for students who rely on aids to overcome problems
of disabilities, critics say.
By KIM MURPHY, Times Staff Writer

PORTLAND, Ore.--Aaron Weingarten is taking accelerated math and advanced
placement history. He's on the A-Team for the Science Bowl. He plays
trumpet, baritone sax and tuba and sings in two choirs, while earning a
3.57 grade point average. But when it came to taking Oregon's new statewide
competency test in writing, he called in sick rather than risk flunking it.
     The 16-year-old high school sophomore has dysgraphia, a learning
disability that, unless he's using a computer with a spell check function,
renders the words he writes woefully different from the ones he has in his
head. And Oregon's new Certificate of Initial Mastery assessment, the key
item in a broad educational reform program, doesn't tolerate bad spelling.
     Flunk the "conventions"--spelling, grammar and punctuation--and you
flunk the test. No more advanced placement courses. No more enhanced
diploma. Aaron isn't even sure he won't have to repeat the 10th grade.
     For more than 30,000 students with learning disabilities in Oregon,
competency testing--a movement that is sweeping the nation--could prove the
single greatest hurdle in a lifetime of struggling to overcome learning
disabilities like dyslexia that a generation ago would have labeled some of
the brightest students as slow or stupid. Last year, more than 42,000 in
the Los Angeles Unified School District alone were classified as learning
disabled.
     Across the country, 25 states are now or soon will be requiring
competency tests for high school graduation, while five others use such
"exit tests" for honors graduation or a special designation on students'
diplomas. In California, Gov. Gray Davis has called for a tough statewide
testing program.
     The writing tests administered last month to Oregon's high school
sophomores are the target of a lawsuit filed by a coalition of parents and
students Monday in U.S. district court here. The case highlights a growing
concern about the tests, which states are hoping will stem the tide of
students graduating from high school without mastering the basics of
reading, writing, math and history.

     Push to Test May Be Too Hard
     The push to test has moved faster than the availability of research on
how to accommodate the needs of students who fall outside the
mainstream--especially students with high intelligence and good mastery of
basic content but with learning disabilities that may make them poor test
takers without help, experts say.
     A 1997 survey by the University of Minnesota's National Center on
Educational Outcomes found only two states that have specific guidelines
allowing students with dyslexia or other similar learning disabilities to
use a word processor with a spell check function during testing.
     Most states permit students with diagnosed learning disabilities to
use things like spell checkers in testing as long as those aids are
included in an Individual Education Program for their daily classwork, said
lawyers who filed the lawsuit. And Oregon--with a test described as
difficult even for students without disabilities--is alone in doubling the
weight of the spelling and punctuation component and failing students who
don't pass that section, they said.
     Tanya Gross, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Education,
emphasized that the tests are not required for obtaining high school
diplomas, and said students are allowed to use dictionaries and pocket
spell checkers known as Franklin Spellers. A test that is designed to
measure basic skills like spelling, she said, can't do that if a student is
allowed to use a computer aid.
     "One of the hallmarks of good writing is correct spelling, and
something that fundamentally alters the standard of the expectations of the
test can't be considered the same test," she said.
     But Sid Wolinsky, a lawyer with Oakland-based Disability Rights
Advocates, which filed the lawsuit in Portland, said Oregon has violated
federal law requiring reasonable accommodations for students with
disabilities.
     "If some mean-spirited bureaucrat had sat down and designed a way of
ruining the education of 30,000 students, they could not have done a better
job than by designing a test . . . which tests those children on the one
thing they have difficulty in presenting, which is the so-called convention
of spelling, punctuation and grammar," he said.
     "It's like telling everybody in a wheelchair, sorry, you can't
graduate unless you can climb the stairs. Or it's like telling deaf
students you can graduate high school if you pass a music appreciation
course--and we will not allow you to wear your hearing aids."
     Nationally, developers of basic skills tests are wrestling with what
those tests ought to be measuring when it comes to students with learning
disabilities, said Martha Thurlow, who oversaw the research for the
National Center on Educational Outcomes.
     "For some, it almost gets down to belief systems about what's fair or
not fair, what gives an advantage or doesn't, what the test says the
construct being tested is," Thurlow said.

     Some Disabled Able to Excel in Classroom
     Learning disabilities range from more common conditions like Attention
Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder to a wide range of disabilities like
dyslexia (which affects reading) and dysgraphia (which affects writing).
     With dyslexia, doctors have been able to isolate a neurological
defect, traceable in brain scans as early as infancy, that renders
sufferers less able to process phonemes, the basic building blocks of
language. Reading and writing ability suffers, although students with aids
such as Books on Tape and computer spell check programs are able to excel
in course work and often display high levels of intelligence and academic
accomplishment.

     Students' Test Scores Can Weigh Heavily
     Oregon's Certificate of Initial Mastery assessment for high school
sophomores went into effect this year, the debut of a massive educational
reform effort that eventually will ask high school seniors to demonstrate
mastery of algebra, geometry, statistics, oral communications, reading and
writing, science, social science, the arts and a foreign language.
     Only one high school in the state is using it as a requirement for
graduation, but school officials say the proficiency tests could affect
access to honors and advanced placement programs, acceptance at Oregon
state universities and preference in hiring by major Oregon employers.
     Oregon, like the vast majority of schools, universities and state
licensing boards that administer standardized tests, does make some
accommodations. They range from granting additional time to take the test
to testing in a quiet environment, and are considered reasonable
accommodations that allow a learning disabled student's test results to be
considered on the same level as other students'.
     Use of a computer and spell checker also may be permitted, but these
are considered "modifications" to the test, and it is not clear whether the
results will be fully counted, based on conflicting statements and policies
issued by the state and individual school districts, lawyers for the
plaintiffs in the lawsuit said.
     Left unanswered are many parents' questions: Will my child be allowed
to move on to the next grade if he passed only a modified test? Will he be
allowed to take honors and advanced placement courses? Will he qualify for
admission to state universities, which are in the process of moving to a
proficiency-based admissions system?
     Mary Peterson, whose daughter Tara was diagnosed with dyslexia in the
8th grade, had her take the test without the computer she normally uses for
school work. "She's been tested with superior intelligence, and I don't
want to do anything to jeopardize her chances of passing it, because if she
doesn't pass it, there are just too many unknowns," she said.
     "My own view is if you want kids to be educated, you need to teach
them also the tools that are available to them. I think every kid should
take the test on a computer," she said.