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LDA NEWS FROM WASHINGTON
A Publication of The Learning Disabilities Association of AmericaAUGUST 9, 2005
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.
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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