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LEGISLATION
Congress left for its August recess without taking action on the
following bills which LDA has been tracking: THE CARL PERKINS
VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION ACT, THE WORKFORCE INVESTMENT
ACT (WIA) and TEMPORARY AID TO NEEDY FAMILIES (TANF)
APPROPRIATIONS
The Senate Appropriations Committee passed its Labor-Health and
Human Services-Education bill on Thursday, July 14. The bill will
not go to the Senate floor before September. Like the House bill,
funding for IDEA Part B State grants and Title I of No Child Left
Behind was increased by only $100 million. Also under IDEA, preschool
funding was level funded and Part C was only slightly increased.
Funding for the striving readers program, which provides grants
for reading instruction for middle and high school students, was
slightly higher than the House appropriation. Discretionary spending
for Vocational Rehabilitation State Grants was also slightly higher
in the Senate Committee than in the House Bill. As in the House,
money was appropriated for the Vocational Education Program. The
Senate Committee also appropriated $6.9 million for the Higher Education
Demonstration for Students with Disabilities.
RECONCILIATION
Last spring, Congress approved a Budget Resolution that included
instructions for separate bills, one on spending cuts and the other
on tax cuts, known as reconciliation. (Reconciliation does not kick
in if no Budget Resolution is passed, as has happened in the past
few years.) Committees are instructed to recommend program cuts
in mandatory programs (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, nutrition
and student loan programs) by September 16 and additional tax cuts
of $70 billion over the next five years by September 23. In the
Senate, there is a limit on the amount of time for debate and very
stringent limits on what kinds of amendments can be offered. Filibustering
is prohibited. Because this year's budget resolution creates separate
spending and tax reconciliation bills, any program spending increase
in the spending reconciliation bill requires a cut in another program.
The increase cannot be "paid for" by making changes to
the tax code, even though the federal government treats tax credits
and deductions as expenditures.
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH ACT OF 2005 (HR 3313, S.
1500)
These identical bills would authorize the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences to develop multidisciplinary research
centers on women's health and disease prevention and to conduct
and coordinate a research program to collect, compile, publish and
disseminate information on possible health effects of hormone-disrupting
chemicals, with emphasis on exposures to low doses of individual
chemicals and chemical mixtures during critical life stages of development,
particularly the effects of prenatal exposures on children's health.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2005, HR 2569
would (1) eliminate the requirement that a secondary school special
education teacher have expertise in content area, (2) let the IEP
team for each student determine if the child will take the standard
academic assessment (thus eliminating the cap on students with disabilities
whose scores on alternate assessments count towards adequate yearly
progress), and (3) excuse limited English speaking students from
taking the standard academic assessment until they are proficient
in English. In his Dear Colleague letter in response to the request
for signons to the bill, Representative George Miller pointed out
that "HR 2569 wrongly assumes that no children with disabilities
can achieve to grade-level academic standards. Existing regulations
allow great flexibility in testing those students who, because of
their disability, are not able to meet grade-level academic standards.
In fact, current regulations allow approximately 30% of special
education students to be held to different standards than their
peers and still be considered proficient for accountability purposes.
Unintended consequences of this provision would be reduced academic
attention for special education students. The proposed teacher quality
change would be a step backwards in our efforts to ensure that all
children have teachers who know the subject they are teaching",
and "Because the bill exempts Limited English Proficient students
from testing until they are proficient in English, schools would
have disincentive to help them learn English."
FROM THE DEPARTMENT
OF EDUCATION
Deputy Education Secretary Ray Simon sent a letter to Congressman
Mike Simpson (R-ID).promising to align the deadline for paraprofessionals
to be "highly qualified" with that of teachers, that is,
until the end of the 2005-06 school year.
IDEA MEETINGS OVER: COMMENT PERIOD ENDS SEPTEMBER 6.
The last of the public meetings on the proposed regulations for
IDEA 04 was held on July 12 in Washington D.C. At all of the hearings,
response to the proposals was mixed, with school administrators
generally expressing support and parents expressing concern about
perceived loss of rights and protections. The most common comments
were on highly qualified teachers, related service providers, discipline,
and specific learning disability. All comments, both oral and written
are being entered into a departmental database. Final regulations
are expected by the end of the year.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND FLEXIBILITY
WAIVERS GRANTED
As of July 7, the U.S. Department of Education had approved, via
final decision letters, at least some of the requested changes to
16 states' accountability plans under the No Child Left Behind Act.
The most commonly approved amendments are:
- Raising the minimum subgroup size: (N size)
Georgia (for all subgroups); Minnesota (for students with limited
English proficiency, from 20 to 40). The N-size determines how
large a subpopulation -- whether poor, minority, English language
learners or special education students -- must be for a school
to be judged based on their progress as a group, in addition to
the progress of the overall student population. The larger the
N-size is, the more likely it is a particular group would be excluded
from the state's accountability system. The 2 percent policy allows
states meeting the core principles of NCLB to count the proficiency
scores of up to 2 percent of students who take modified assessments
based on modified achievement standards toward AYP. As of August
4, the Department of Education had rejected all the 2 percent
requests for the 2004-05 school year from states that have a larger
N-size for their special education students than for other groups.
These states are Alaska, New Jersey, Washington and Wisconsin.
Washington's request to take advantage of the 2 percent policy
was denied when it proposed raising from 30 to 40 the N-size of
its other subgroups to match that of its special education and
limited-English-proficiency subgroups.
- Using a "confidence interval" of 99 percent
in calculating adequate yearly progress:
Mississippi, Wisconsin. A "confidence interval" is a
statistical technique to help determine with greater reliability
whether schools have met their achievement targets.
- Using a 'confidence interval' of 75 percent under the
law's "safe harbor" provision, which provides a second
look at schools and districts that did not make AYP initially:
Delaware, Indiana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin.
- Averaging results across years: Alabama and
Maryland will average participation rates over a three-year period;
Minnesota will average proficiency rates for up to two years.
- Identifying districts for improvement only when they
do not make AYP in the same subject for two consecutive years
in elementary, middle, and high school:
Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Oregon, Wisconsin.
- Revising annual AYP targets to increase in 10 equal
increments through 2014:
Missouri.
- Adjusting upward the percent of proficient students
with disabilities in schools that failed to make AYP based solely
on their special education subgroup:
Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee.
However, the Department rejected Connecticut's request
to test some students with special needs at their instructional
levels, not their grade levels.
ILLINOIS PASSES LAW ON TESTING OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Governor Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected to sign a bill (HB3678)
that would allow students in special education to be tested at the
instructional level at which they are being taught rather than their
grade level, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act. However,
The U.S. Department of Education would have to sign off on any changes
before they could take effect. Similar requests made by other states
regarding the special education testing have all been denied. The
bill can be found at http://www.ilga.gov.
REPORT FROM THE CENTERS FOR
DISEASE CONTROL
The Centers for Disease Control issued the "Third National
Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals", which
documents the levels of 148 chemicals in Americans' bodies, including
lead and mercury, PCBs, certain pesticides and herbicides, and byproducts
of tobacco smoke in non-smokers. Data on mercury, which can cause
permanent brain damage in the developing fetus, show that 5.7% of
women of childbearing age tested had levels of mercury within a
factor of 10 of the level known to be dangerous. This data does
not reflect the possibility of higher exposures in mercury 'hot
spots' in regions downwind from power plants that emit mercury.
The Report and Executive Summary can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport.
COURT CASES
SUPREME COURT TO HEAR WEAST VS SCHAFER
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case of Weast v. Schaffer
on Wednesday, October 5, 2005. ("Weast" is Superintendent
of Montgomery County, Maryland Public Schools) The issue is whether
the burden of proof rests with parents challenging the adequacy
of a special education student's IEP. More than 20 disability organizations
filed amicus briefs in support of Brian Schaffer. Eight states -
Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island,
Washington, and Wisconsin - joined with Virginia in an amicus brief
supporting the parents. Three states and one territory - Hawaii,
Oklahoma, Alaska and Guam - filed amicus briefs in support of the
school district. The Bush administration reversed their previous
position (in support of parents), and now argues that the burden
of proof should be on the parents who challenge the IEP.
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR ON LINE COURSES
Jerry La Marca, whose learning disabilities include short term memory
loss, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central
District of California, Southern Division, in Santa Ana against
Capella, an on line training institution, for violating the ADA.
La Marca took courses from Capella as part of a master's program
in information-technology-system design. After he completed one
quarter at the university, in which he received A's in both courses
he took, the administration installed a new software system for
managing online courses. La Marca found the new setup confusing
and difficult to work with. He complained to university officials
and asked them to switch back to the old software, which they said
they could not do. La Marca then asked for more time to complete
his course work, and discussed with the officials how much more
time he should be given. But when the discussions became heated,
he said, he was suspended from the university. He is seeking reinstatement
at Capella as well as unspecified monetary damages.
EPA REGULATIONS ON MERCURY EMISSIONS FROM ELECTRIC POWER
PLANTS
On August 5, Judges David Sentelle and Janice Rogers Brown of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied a motion
to halt immediately the regulations adopted in March by the Environmental
Protection Agency. These regulations changed the designation of
mercury to a nonhazardous substance, backed away from a 90 percent
emissions reduction goal, and could create "hot-spots"
of mercury contamination around power plants that choose to trade
for mercury credits rather than cap their emissions. Contaminated
fish are the primary route by which humans are exposed to mercury,
a toxic, persistent, pollutant that is released into the air when
coal is burned, falls to the ground and into water where it accumulates
in the food chain. ." EPA estimates 300,000 babies born each
year may have more risk of learning disabilities because of mercury
concentrations in the blood of their mothers from eating fish from
all over the world. Despite that warning, Jeff Holmstead, EPA's
assistant administrator for air and radiation said, "There's
virtually no relationship between the number of children born with
potentially elevated levels of mercury and U.S. power plants. It's
only a very, very small number of people who are affected by local
mercury depositions."
LDA News from Washington is a periodic publication of The
Learning Disabilities Assocation of America, Inc., 4156 Library
Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15234-1349, Phone: 412.341.1515, Fax: 412.344.0224
This is a bulletin containing news of interest to the volunteer
and administrative leadership of LDA National and its State and
Local Affiliates. Written by LDA's Washington Representative, Justine
Maloney; Kathy Lawson, Editor. LDA members wishing to be
added to the email list may contact Kathy Lawson, at klawson@ldaamerica.org.
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