No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind A Toolkit for Teachers

Last Updated Aug 20, 2008 01:22 PM

No Child Left Behind A Toolkit for Teachers

Teaching Students with Disabilities

Over 20 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by having high expectations for such children and ensuring their access in the general curriculum to the maximum extent possible; coordinating the Act with other local, educational service agency, State, and Federal school improvement efforts in order to ensure that such children benefit from such efforts and that special education can become a service for children rather than a place where they are sent; providing appropriate special education and related services and aids and supports in the regular classroom to such children whenever appropriate; supporting high quality intensive professional development for all personnel who work with such children in order to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge necessary to enable them to meet developmental goals and to the maximum extent possible, those challenging expectations that have been established or all children...

- Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Sec. 601(c)(5)(A, C, D, E)

No Child Left Behind strongly affirms that all students can achieve to high standards, including students with disabilities. NCLB works in conjunction with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 (IDEA),23 which is the nation's special education law. Under the law, students with disabilities must have access to the same high-quality curriculum and instruction as all other students.

Through IDEA reauthorization, Congress is considering how the highly qualified teacher requirements should apply to special education teachers. It is understood that:

The highly qualified teacher requirements in No Child Left Behind apply to all general education teachers and special education teachers who teach core academic subjects. All teachers must have in-depth understanding of the subject matter they are teaching their students, so that students can meet grade-level standards.

These requirements apply whether the teacher provides core academic instruction in a regular classroom, a resource room or another setting.

General education and special education teachers need to be knowledgeable and skilled in how to teach all students, including students with disabilities, so that all students can achieve to high academic standards.

Myth:
No Child Left Behind requires students with significant cognitive disabilities to take the same test as all other students on their grade level and then unfairly holds schools accountable for the results.

Reality:
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires alternate assessments be made available to students who cannot take the regular assessments, even with accommodations. When measuring AYP, states and school districts have the flexibility to count the "proficient" (passing) scores of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who take alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards--as long as the number of those proficient scores does not exceed 1 percent of all students in the grades assessed, which is about 9 percent of students with disabilities. This allows schools and districts to receive credit for student progress.

See also No Child Left Behind 496 1 - 5