Last December, Congress passed a new federal education law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, replacing No Child Left Behind. With it will come new rules for states to follow regarding standardized testing for “accountability” purposes. Negotiators have agreed on draft rules, which will soon be released so the public can comment before the rules are actually approved and enforced.

How will students and teachers be affected if the draft rules are not changed and are finalized? Here’s a post explaining all of that by Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as  FairTest, a nonprofit organization that works to end the misuses of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, educators and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally sound.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/04/28/new-u-s-rules-for-standardized-testing-have-been-drafted-heres-what-they-mean-for-kids/

In interesting read. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/04/20/number-of-us-students-in-special-education.html

After years of steady decline, the nationwide count of school-age students covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has shown an upswing since the 2011-12 school year based on the most recently available federal data, driven by rapid growth in such disability categories as autism. Students with specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia have been, and remain, the largest group of those covered under the IDEA.

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