Is this really a good IDEA?
While perusing the articles that were attracted by my Google Reader, I came across an article entitled $14 Million to Help States Better Assess Students with Disabilities Under No Child Left Behind, IDEA. Apparently states were encouraged to band together and apply for grants that would help fund the development of new assessments for children with disabilities.
Technically this article does not directly relate to the topic of this blog, however, it leaves a few questions with answers I would like to speculate.
First of all, why did the states have to band together in order to apply for the grant? Is the money getting split up evenly between the states within each group?
How is the modification of the academic achievement standards and the creation of new standardized tests going to effect the current guidelines of differentiated instruction?
When tracking is common practice at a school will they be giving different standardized tests within the classroom?
On the other hand I am encouraged by a few aspects of this text. It states in the article that the new standards and tests will only be administered to a very small group of students which makes me think they are attempting to avoid a mass clustering of every student with a learning disability.
**Something happened last night when I posted this article. The last portion is missing. I will edit it when I get home today. (10/23/07)
