The highest stakes of high stakes testing are upon Virginia’s students this school year. Failure to pass even one mandated SOL test will deny seniors a Standard or Advanced studies diploma this coming spring. Estimates of how many students will fail to graduate because of SOL test failure, as well as how many kids won’t make it to graduation day due to dropping out, are beginning to trickle in.

While the estimates include all students, some groups are certainly going to be hit harder than others. (Research on high stakes testing points out these trends in other states). Students receiving special education services are one such group. Already the effects are being felt.

Defining "Participation"

Schools are accredited based on adjusted pass rates of students who take the SOL tests (and Virginia Alternative Assessment Program). Who gets included and who gets excluded from individual SOL tests can greatly affect schools’ pass rate and thus, accreditation status. Rising pass rates for subgroups lead people to believe that things are going well and that progress is being made. This includes students in special education.

Individual special education students’ participation in SOL tests is determined, as it should be, by IEP teams. Virginia has decided that students can participate in just one of the four tests given at grades 3, 5, and 8 and still be considered "in" SOL testing. That is, for these students, taking an SOL test in just one of the four core subjects counts as participating in the SOL assessment program. (For example, a student who, in accordance with her IEP, takes the grad 3 science test but not the grade 3 reading, math or history tests, counts as participating in SOL testing.)

Because of this definition of participation in SOL testing, the number of students with disabilities taking various SOL tests at each grade level varies with the particular tests. For example, the number of students taking the 5^th grade English SOL test differs, in some cases widely, from the number taking 5^th grade science.

For the remainder of this paper, the numbers used as illustrations are based on the SOL reading tests, also known as English-RLR SOL tests. The participation and pass rate data are based on the 2003 state data.

For grades 3, 5, 8, and End-of-Course testing in high school, the state reports the percentage of students with disabilities who participated in SOL testing on a test-by-test basis.

For high school, obviously only those students, students in special education and others, enrolled in SOL-tested courses (and not exempt from testing by IEPs) are eligible and required to take SOL tests and, therefore, counted in SOL-test participation and pass rates. However, the 99% SOL-test participation rate the state reports for high school students in special education is extremely misleading because the state doesn’t report the total number of those students who are not enrolled in SOL-tested courses in the first place. (See discussion below).

During the 2002-2003 school year, 9,686 students with disabilities took the 3^rd grade English SOL test and 35% (or 4,281) of them passed. According to the Department of Education, however, there were actually 12,269 third graders with disabilities. Of these students, 21% (or 2,583) of third graders with disabilities did not take the third grade English test.

For fifth grade, the state reported that there were 13,740 students with disabilities. Of these students, 11,093 fifth graders with disabilities took the 5^th grade English SOL test. The state-reported pass rate was 58% with an exclusion-from-testing rate of 19%.

In eighth grade, the number of students identified with disabilities continues to rise to 13,556. Because passing the 8^th grade English RLR test is a requirement for a Modified Standard Diploma, the number of 8^th graders with disabilities taking this test is higher than for the lower two grades. About 92% of all 8^th graders with disabilities participated in the 8^th grade English SOL test; the pass rate for these students was 36%. For students who had previously failed the 8^th grade English SOL test and who were retaking the test (these would be students in high school), the pass rate was 15.7% (or 663 students out of 4,236).

For high schoolers, the 2003 English/RLR (Reading/Literature/Research) SOL tests have extremely high stakes for students hoping to get a diploma with the Class of 2004. Students must take and pass the English RLR SOL test, as well as the English/Writing test, in order to earn the verified English credits needed for a Standard or Advanced Studies diploma. Thus, not only does failure on these tests affect student outcomes, failure to take the tests affects student outcomes in much the same way.

The state reported that there were 10,067 students with disabilities in 11^th grade in 2002-03. The state also reports that 6,209 students took the 11^th grade English RLR SOL test, and 74% of them passed. Because the number of students taking the 11^th grade SOL test includes some retakes (and the disaggregated data has not yet been made available by the Department of Education), this means that less than 46% of students with disabilities who were high school juniors have passed the English RLR SOL test and, thus, are remaining on the regular diploma track (How much less than 46% of them can’t be quantified without further data from DOE.)

Table 1: Number of students with disabilities at SOL testing grades compared with the number of those students who took SOL tests (2003)

Table 2: State-reported pass rates on SOL tests (2003) based on students in special education participating in SOL testing compared with pass rates based on total special education population

Reported High School Special Education Participation Rates Are Misleading

The Department of Education reported that the percentage of 11th graders with disabilities participating in the English/Reading SOL test was 99%. Indeed, the reported participation rate is 97% or higher for all the SOL End-of-Course (high school) tests.

As noted previously, these reported test participation rates are based on the numbers of students with disabilities enrolled in SOL courses who took the SOL tests at the end, as such rates must be. However, excluding from SOL courses and testing, and thereby from the pass rate statistics, students with disabilities who are less likely to pass the tests ensures the pass rates will appear to be improving.

The question is, of course, if only 6,209 students with disabilities took the high school English SOL test, what happened to the other almost 4,000 high school students with disabilities? Why are they being excluded from the courses and tests required to earn a Standard or Advanced Studies diploma, and what high school outcomes are we anticipating for these 4,000 students? Thousands of special education students simply must not be taking SOL courses or tests, and are not being counted.

Heads Up: Diploma Rates Will Fall

In 2001, the last year for which the state has released such figures, 4,103 special education students (data on the total students with disabilities in 12^th grade that year is not currently available on the DOE website) received Standard or Advanced Studies diplomas. In 2002, only 3,045 juniors in special education passed one of the two English SOL tests required to stay on track for either of these regular diplomas. In 2003, only 4,590 juniors with disabilities passed the 11^th grade English SOL test. (The Classes of 2004-07 will have a choice of tests for the other four required for a standard diploma).

There aren’t fewer students in special education. It’s just that fewer of them must be on track for earning Standard or Advanced Studies diplomas. The more we leave out, the more the pass rate rises. And the more the pass rates rise, the less anyone pays attention to such details.