Story on Special Ed causing rating drop for Stonewall Jackson (Long, Woodrow) (Dallas: schools, college)

[Lakewooder]

Drastic drop for Dallas

"This year, the state test scores of deaf and special education students were counted for the first time...a regional school for the deaf, the change meant including scores for deaf students, who overall didn’t perform as well on the exam"


‎"In determining ratings, the state looks at overall passing rates by subject/grade level and individual student groups: black, Hispanic, white and economically disadvantaged. The special-education student scores could be included in more than one group; for example, a student could be classified as both Hispanic and economically disadvantaged"

"... there are many advantages to providing a deaf education program, including exposing students to sign language and helping them develop sensitivity toward deaf people. But she fears the rule change could discourage other schools from hosting the program"

[BigDGeek]

I don't get why it's acceptable to use deaf students as an excuse for the downgrade; deafness in and of itself doesn't make someone less intelligent. They should be scoring the same as their non-deaf peers.

[loves2read]

special education groups in almost any normal ISD (I exclude Highland Park or Southlake Carroll) would also include students who are minority and lower socio-economic groupings

not necessarily special education because they are deaf--just because there are more special needs in those two other categories--from what I have seen and heard

[loves2read]

that is harsh--
one standard does not apply to all--that is just the fallacy of the "no child left behind" thinking

when you teach a deaf child in a regular class you can do some modifications but you can't modify everything and still maintain the standard for the group
and you are often depending on a signer to help translate what you say for the deaf child--
that is difficult--

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

I don't get why it's acceptable to use deaf students as an excuse for the downgrade; deafness in and of itself doesn't make someone less intelligent. They should be scoring the same as their non-deaf peers.

As a cadre they just don't score as well.

[Lakewooder]

Don't know how many of you can read the whole story but this snippet might help:

“The TAKS test is not geared towards deaf children,” Henderson said. “We should be testing their progress from year to year, not giving them a test that’s way above their vocabulary.”

Personally I did not realize that vocabulary was affected - now I can see why that would cause a major drop. I have taken a short class in sign language and that made me think how a lot of things are sort of 'shorthand', so to speak. I'm sure there are also kids who are from households where only Spanish or another language is spoken - so I don't know how that works with a deaf person.

[Ramona72]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

I don't get why it's acceptable to use deaf students as an excuse for the downgrade; deafness in and of itself doesn't make someone less intelligent. They should be scoring the same as their non-deaf peers.

For deaf children, learning English language skills can be very difficult, especially if they have had the disability since birth. Hearing children learn a vast amount of English grammar, vocabulary, word order, tone, syntax, idioms, etc., just through years of listening to other people as well as themselves. Sign language is not a substitute for this.

Entering an academic environment with this kind of language deficit can be a huge handicap. It has nothing to do with intelligence, you're right, but there's often a language disconnect that makes academic knowledge, concepts, and vocabulary more difficult for them than for hearing children. It's not surprising at all that they often score lower.

[PrincessKick]

Originally Posted by Ramona72

For deaf children, learning English language skills can be very difficult, especially if they have had the disability since birth. Hearing children learn a vast amount of English grammar, vocabulary, word order, tone, syntax, idioms, etc., just through years of listening to other people as well as themselves. Sign language is not a substitute for this.

Entering an academic environment with this kind of language deficit can be a huge handicap. It has nothing to do with intelligence, you're right, but there's often a language disconnect that makes academic knowledge, concepts, and vocabulary more difficult for them than for hearing children. It's not surprising at all that they often score lower.

Exactly. And a lot of time students don't start learning ASL right away. And their parents are often hearing and don't learn it. Working in this field, I have met some very intelligent deaf people but if tested with the TAKS test they likely would not score as well because of the format of the test.

[BigDGeek]

Then...and maybe this is stating the obvious...they ought to be given a different test that is geared towards their language?

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by PrincessKick

Exactly. And a lot of time students don't start learning ASL right away. And their parents are often hearing and don't learn it. Working in this field, I have met some very intelligent deaf people but if tested with the TAKS test they likely would not score as well because of the format of the test.

My son's girlfriend is an expert in ASL with lots of college and graduate level education revolving around ASL, hearing issues and psychology.

Just listening to her I think a point than some might miss is that as a group those with substantial deafness have significantly limited vocabularies relative to others. ASL is slow and very cumbersome relative to speech plus few people can sign well and fast the yield being deaf kids usually have vocabularies several thousand words smaller than others.

Conversely, those with deafness show a much smaller math gap than vocab gap.