Testing Deaf Students in an Age of Accountability

Introduction

Introduction Robert C. Johnson and Ross E. Mitchell In the years since passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, U.S. federal law has increasingly promoted the view that all children, including those in poverty , from minority populations, or with disabilities, have an inherent right to equal educational opportunity, as much as possible in regular school and classroom settings. Shortly after the beginning of the 21st century, those who were dissatisfied with the uneven results of this egalitarian effort prompted a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, demanding that schools do everything possible to enable all children in every state—especially those who have historically been educated separately or in other ways marginalized—to attain “academic proficiency.” The reauthorized law, known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which provides a narrow mandate and little funding, requires that states hold their public schools accountable for ensuring that all students either demonstrate proficiency on statewide assessments or make steady progress toward reaching that goal by 2014. Although some students with disabilities are surely benefiting from this new inclusiveness and experiencing little difficulty proving their knowledge of a general curriculum on standardized tests, the overwhelming majority continue to have problems that have long presented serious challenges to educators. Teaching deaf students, for example, requires that teachers know how to communicate the curriculum through one or more of the following face-to-face modalities: American Sign Language (a complete language conveyed through movements of arms, fingers, facial expressions, and the body that has a grammar and syntax unrelated to English), some form of signing intended to represent English (Signed English, Signing Exact English, Seeing Essential English, etc.), or orally through spoken English (produced in a way intended to make words visually decipherable). Teachers must find ways to explain the vocabulary and grammar of written English to students who may never have heard a human voice speak the language. With students who use sign language, teachers must be able to understand the students’ signed statements or questions. Many teachers in mainstream settings, of course, rely on interpreters to facilitate these interactions when deaf students are placed in their classes, but the resulting communication with these students, even with a highly qualified educational interpreter, is indirect and can be otherwise problematic. Because the abilities to hear and produce spoken English remain elusive to varying degrees for many deaf individuals throughout their lives, finding the best way to teach deaf students to read and write printed English—usually learned as 1 a phonological code of familiar speech patterns—is a subject of endless debate. The fact that most standardized assessments are presented in printed English, a code of unfamiliar speech patterns for most deaf students, helps explain the difficulties facing deaf students and their teachers in an age of accountability. The challenges of deaf education, alien to the vast majority of students and teachers, used to occur exclusively in special schools for deaf students. In these schools, teachers and school administrators often measured academic success according to standards they believed to be fair and reasonable for this special population . Because most deaf students had (and still have) serious difficulties mastering reading and writing English, schools emphasized vocational training for all but a few academically successful students. Today, most American deaf students are learning in regular, local schools—more and more often in classrooms with hearing children, but frequently in special classes for deaf students as well. The academic proficiency of deaf students, whether in mainstream or special education settings, is increasingly measured by standards established by state departments of education for the general student population. Even in schools that exclusively serve deaf students, teachers are obliged to do their utmost to help these students learn the state’s general curriculum well enough to demonstrate proficiency on standards-based assessments. In several states, deaf students who are not able to perform at this level are being denied a high school diploma upon graduation, jeopardizing their ability to get jobs or attend post-secondary programs (see Lollis, and Moore, this volume). This book is the result of an effort to bring attention to the overwhelming challenge the accountability movement—now codified in federal law—has set before all schools serving deaf students. In light of the fact that students who are deaf, historically and on average, have performed far below grade level on standardized tests, the editors and contributors to this...