Re: Under 40

[MONICALUCIDO@comcast.net]

Truly sickening.

Joe
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Horn, James" <jhorn@monmouth.edu>
> The U. S. Department of Education has given "cognitively challenged" a whole new 
> meaning, if you get my drift. The Spellings School Failure Enforcement Squad has 
> come up with new demands in Florida to have children with IQs under 40 FCAT-ed 
> each year and to have their scores figured into the failure rates:
> 
> 
>     "Scores from this special assessment ? designed for children classified by 
> the state as profoundly mentally handicapped, among other disabilities ? will 
> likely count toward school grades in the 2009-10 school year."
> 
> 
> So in fact these children, many of whom can't attend to their own bodily 
> functions, will be tested in math and reading--and their scores will be added in 
> to determine if the school is making AYP. Retardation, obviously, has no 
> bounds--and I am not talking about these vicitimized children. From the 
> Sun-Sentinel:
> 
> 
>     . . . federal authorities forced Florida education officials to develop the 
> new alternate assessment this year for the students deemed unable to take the 
> FCAT under any circumstance.
> 
>     The U.S. Department of Education determined that the state's old measure was 
> not sufficient for assessing students with severe cognitive disabilities at the 
> lowest level of test taking, called participatory.
> 
>     Participatory means that the student answers a question by gazing or 
> pointing in the direction of a picture card, and the teacher records the answer. 
> For example, a teacher holds up a picture of an American flag. Next, the teacher 
> holds up picture cards of a tree, a star and a dog and asks the students to 
> indicate which one is in the upper left corner of the flag.
> 
>     State officials say the new assessment ensures that the performance of all 
> students with disabilities will be included in whether a school meets the 
> standard of Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. 
> If any students are left out of the assessment, schools face penalties.. . . .
> 
> 
> The only good part of this story is that, by 2009-2010, this abusive madness 
> will be in the history books. If it is not, there is surely no way back. 
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