Fw: Department of Education Issues Changes to NCLB; Accepts Many CEC Recommendations

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IPUT TampaBay wrote: \ Subject: Department of Education Issues Changes

to NCLB; Accepts Many CEC Recommendations Department of Education Issues Changes to NCLB; Accepts Many CEC Recommendations On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education released final regulations on a variety of provisions authorized by No Child Left Behind of importance to students with disabilities and/or gifts and talents such as: critical changes to the graduation rate calculation; the participation of students with disabilities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); and increased transparency on approved providers of supplemental educational services for students with disabilities. While CEC is pleased that the Department accepted many of its recommendations, CEC recognizes the additional resources that will be needed to fully implement the final regulations and therefore, has urged the Department to fully utilize technical assistance mechanisms to assists school districts/states in enacting the new provisions. Selected provisions supported by CEC include: Ø Graduation Rate Calculation: CEC is pleased that the Department responded positively to its concerns that the proposed regulations would have allowed for prospectively assigning a group of students on a path towards graduation, instead of making decisions based on the individual student. Instead, the final regulations allow states

to use two types of calculations for determining their graduation rate. The first is targeted at students who take four years (or less) to graduate with a regular high school diploma; the second is for students who may take longer than four years to graduate with a regular high school diploma though this option should not be limited to groups of students based on their characteristics (i.e. students with disabilities, English language learners, etc.) CEC was pleased that the Department accepted its recommendation to explicitly state that students who take less

than four years to graduate with a regular diploma must be counted in the graduation rate, in response to reports that the definition of 'dropout' in some states may count students who graduated in less the four years. Ø Participation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): CEC is pleased that the Department agreed with CEC that the participation rate of students with disabilities be included in reporting of NAEP data on State report cards. CEC supported this change to ensure transparency and inform parents, educators and the community of how students with disabilities are included in this nationwide assessment. Additionally, CEC supports the Department's change to State and Local Education Agency report cards which requires the percentage of students at each achievement level. Ø Supplemental Educational Services: While CEC remains concerned that resources applied to school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) are diverted from other uses that a school/district may want to implement but cannot due to lack of resources, CEC is pleased that the Department agreed that the Local Education Agency must indicate which SES providers are able to serve students with disabilities. CEC's concern regarding SES providers stemmed from an August 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office which found that many challenges exist in attracting providers to serve certain geographic areas (i.e. rural) and certain populations (i.e. students with disabilities). Look for additional analysis of the NCLB Final Title I Regulations in future editions of CEC's Policy Insider. For more information, including the regulations in their entirety and Secretary Spellings' remarks, click here. To read CEC's response to the proposed recommendations, click here. Donna ez