“Ain’t Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin’: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools”
—Caleb Stewart Rossitor1
Chapter 2 exposed how struggling learners—like Kenny, Marcus and millions of others—are illegally mislabeled as disabled and dumped into special education. This chapter highlights data that reveals the extent of the appalling harm that these students suffer. It is far worse than anyone, even parents and those who with general awareness of the problems in our nation’s schools, can imagine.
Almost all of the struggling learners, as we have seen, are capable of achieving at or near grade level if they receive adequate instruction in general education. Yet, in the words of a professor of public policy who decided to become a math teacher in public schools, “Ain’t Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin.’” Those words are intended to shock, but they’re not hyperbole, as the data in this Chapter will show.
We’ll see first that in general education, struggling learners learn very little. Around two-thirds of them are below proficiency in reading. Still, it’s far worse in special education where they do learn next to “Nothin” (while enduring stigma and often severe segregation from peers). Not only is special education not specially good. It is so bad that most struggling learners would have been better off if they had remained in general education. A scholar writes that some experts “believe that, given the weak effects of special education instructional practices and the social and psychological costs of labeling, the current system of special education is, at best, no more justifiable than simply permitting most students to remain unidentified in regular classrooms. . . .”2
In other words, while special education is intended to remedy learning deficits, it does just the opposite. The enormous disparities between the test scores of students in general education (who don’t receive special education services) and students who receive special education services, keep getting wider as students in special education move up the grade ladder. If special education were truly special, the disparities would narrow.
Bear in mind too that special education was originally supposed to be short-term services for students who do not have severe cognitive and other limitations. Its purpose was to enable them to catch up and return to general education without special education services. But special education is anything but short-term. According to one account, only about two percent of students with disabilities exit special education.3 And that minuscule percentage includes students with speech problems (not language problems) who, with the assistance of speech and language pathologists, frequently grow out of the speech disability.
None of this is to suggest that general education is an academic paradise. Struggling learners who remain in general education without special education services also fall farther behind each year. Just not nearly as fast and far are those who are placed in special education. Talk about choosing the lesser of the evils: parents may be forced to choose between what I earlier called the purgatory of general education or the hell of special education.
I wish that were the end of the bad news about underachievement as an indicator of educational abuse. But there’s more, much more. The data by themselves don’t tell all. This chapter also includes a rap sheet on the criminal ways in which school systems falsify actual student achievement. Test score data are grossly inflated, and school systems cover up the deception. It is near impossible for parents and the public to grasp the depths of the achievement gaps. Public schools, whatever their overall deficiencies, are magna cum laude at cover-up.
The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests are recognized as the “gold standard” for measuring the proficiency of U.S. students. Here’s what the 2017 NAEP data reveals.4
Struggling learners in general education nationwide (who don’t receive special education services)
In the fourth grade, only 37% of students in general education achieved proficiency in reading and 40% in math. In the eighth grade, the numbers are 37% in reading and 34% in math.
Struggling learners in special education nationwide (most of them mislabeled as disabled)
In the fourth grade, only 11% of students in special education achieved proficiency in reading and 14% in math. In the eighth grade, the numbers are 7% in reading and 6% for math.
This big picture is a big national catastrophe. About two-thirds of all struggling learners nationwide are not learning to read or compute well enough to succeed in college or the workforce. And about 90% of students who receive special education services are in the same sinking boat, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of them have the cognitive ability to meet grade level proficiency. In some large urban school systems, where poor and minority children are clustered, the number of students with disabilities who achieved proficiency was near zero. For example, based on 2015 data, in eighth grade reading, the percentage achieving proficiency was one percent in Philadelphia, two percent in Cleveland, and three percent in Baltimore and several other cities.5
If you probe more deeply in the 2017 NAEP data, the abuse is even more obvious. The lowest measure, below proficiency, is “below basic,” that is, rock bottom. The percentage of students who scored “below basic” is: for fourth grade reading, 71% for students in special education, 28% for peers in general education; for 8th grade reading, 66% for students in special education, 20% for peers in general education; for fourth grade math, 55% for students in special education, 16% for peers in general education; for eighth grade math, 74% for students in special education, 26% for peers in general education.
And at the risk of incurring a piling-on penalty, we haven’t yet hit the absolute bottom. There’s another, deeper substratum of proof of the devastating failure of struggling learners. It’s found when below proficiency and below basic are converted into the number of grades that students are actually behind their enrolled grade level. For example, Marcus was in the sixth grade and reading at a kindergarten level: the gap was about six years. I have not found any national or state data with this breakdown, and maybe it is not generally collected or published so school systems can avoid further shameful exposure. But in Baltimore, largely unpublished data tell the most appalling story of all. Based on standardized assessment data in reading in 2017:
It’s hard to fully grasp these numbers (and there’s no reason to think that comparable large urban school districts are doing better). Even I was amazed. Among general education students not receiving special education services, 23% of fifth graders are three or more grade levels behind, including 13% who are still at kindergarten or first grade level. Among students who receive special education services, as many as 90 percent of third graders in special education are already two or more grade levels behind. In other words, during the crucial early years, these students, almost all of them mislabeled as disabled, have learned almost nothing about how to read.
Let’s take one more slice at the data, by zeroing in on students in the largest category of disabilities, those identified as having a Specific Learning Disability (LD) such as dyslexia. These students plainly have cognitive abilities that range from low-average to above average. Yet, national data show that in high school at least one fifth of them are reading at five or more grade levels below their enrolled grade level, and close to half are three or more grades below. Students classified as LD are on average 3.4 years behind their enrolled grade level in reading and 3.2 years behind in math.6
No wonder that the dropout rates for students in general education and special education are so high. Students in special education drop out at about twice the rate of their non-disabled peers.7
In fairness, not all of the data are airtight. The accuracy and analysis of data is limited by the huge number of variables, including the extent to which data on students with severe disabilities, who are usually tested in different ways based on alternate academic standards, may be mixed in. But the breadth and depth of educational abuse is beyond doubt, and so is the cover-up.
By now, in this narrative of underachievement, it may seem that I have run out of horror stories. If only that were true. Believe it or not, even the data just summarized doesn’t do complete justice to the complete story of educational abuse. The performance levels are actually much lower and the achievement gaps are actually much higher than they look in the data because of misrepresentations and exaggerations. The cover-up comes in many guises and disguises. The main ones are retentions, “social promotion,” and sham high school diplomas.
In my experience representing over 200 students in special education, more than half have been retained—that is, at some point along the way not promoted to the next grade. “Flunked,” for short. I have not found any data that disaggregates the retention rates of students in general education and special education. But it happens frequently, and it masks how far below grade level a student really is.
Another student I represented, Tyesha, illustrates the problem. She was retained in second grade. Therefore, and thereafter, she was a year older than most of her peers. Not good for her, but good for the school’s test scores which measure performance level based on enrolled grade not on chronological age. So when Tyesha was in fifth grade and reading at a second grade level, her gap looked like three years; but in reality she was four years behind her same-age peers.
In theory, retention could be a good thing. It would allow students, particularly in their early school years, to follow a developmentally appropriate course. Students develop socially and academically at difference paces, and most poor and minority children enter school with significant learning deficits. Retention might allow them to catch up, hopefully no later than third grade. But that’s not the way it typically works.
Twenty years ago, as a consultant to the Baltimore school system, I wrote a “Study of Promotion/Retention Policies in Urban School Districts,” and drafted a groundbreaking set of policies that were later adopted.8 A common practice then was for some students to be retained more than once, severely harming them and giving general education teachers the unmanageable task of accommodating significantly over-aged students in their already overcrowded classes. The reform policies eliminated double retentions and required structured interventions for struggling learners in danger of retention. Today, double retentions are gone, but, no surprise, structured interventions never arrived.
By one fairly recent count, about 16 states have policies calling for third grade students to be retained unless they pass a reading assessment.9 Being able to read by third grade is generally considered the crucial gateway to success throughout K-12 schooling. And some states purport to require RTI-like interventions before or after retention.10 Yet, teachers around the country say that such policies “are another example of lofty educational goals paired with insufficient resources.”11 The interventions are too little, or not available at all, and the policies fall flat. According to Johns Hopkins University researcher Robert Slavin, retention looks good for a while because the retained children are a year older than their classmates, but it “is rarely an effective or necessary policy.”12
In fact, neither retention nor promotion works without RTI. If you learned the lessons in Chapter 2, you know what often happens next. General education teachers, weighed down by so many students who are so far below grade level, mislabel some of them as disabled and unload them into special education. And virtually all of them are subjected to the permanent injury of “social promotion.”
“Social promotion” occurs when students in either general education or special education are promoted from one grade to the next despite their inability to meet state standards or otherwise legitimately earn passing grades. It happens almost all the time with struggling learners. Otherwise, how—when they are so far behind grade level in reading and/or math—are they promoted from one grade to the next?
The answer is that they are given passing grades no matter how badly they are performing. Report cards telling parents that Marcus or Tyesha has passed are typically pure fiction. Parents are, of course, deceived. They look at their child’s report card and think the passing grades are genuine. The report card may also claim that the student has made good improvement. But there is usually no truth to any of these labels of progress. Struggling learners like Marcus and Tyesha are usually far behind peers, and “good improvement” may be more indicative of good behavior and effort than actual academic growth.
Thus, social promotion conceals huge gaps between students’ actual ability and regular passing standards for the grades they are in. And the public, like parents, are fooled by the deception, the same as with bogus high school diplomas.
Once upon a time, a high school diploma was worth the paper it was written on. No more, to an astounding extent. In early 2018, an article in Education Week reported on “revelations” of “bogus graduation-rate practices.”13
Caleb Steward Rossiter is a college professor who descended from the ivory tower to teach math in the Washington, D.C. public schools. He taught pre-calculus to high school seniors. But he wasn’t able to teach them much: half of them, he found, could not figure correctly second grade math problems. Yet, while he wasn’t able to teach them a lot, they taught him a lot.
His book Ain’t Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin’: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools tells of malpractice on a grand scale. One teacher told him about a particular student in pre-calculus: “That boy can’t add two plus two . . . [but] of course I passed him . . . Everybody knows that a D for a special education student means nothing but that he came in once in a while.”14
Rossiter’s experience is part of a nationwide epidemic of scandalously inflated graduation rates.15 While grade inflation is rampant beginning in early elementary school, the practice peaks in high school. Although huge numbers of general education students and almost all special education students are near hopelessly behind, schools are under the gun to pass them, keeping graduation rates high and dropout rates low.
Several decades ago, there was a movement across the states to require demanding high school exit exams. To colleges and potential employers, high school diplomas had lost their credibility. The exit exams were allied to the accountability reforms that led to passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Over half the states imposed them. But now that number is dwindling rapidly.16 Why? Because too many students simply can’t pass them.
The retreat includes states abolishing the tests as a graduation requirement, states watering down the tests, and states allowing students to bypass the tests altogether. In Prince George’s County in Maryland, a populous bedroom suburb for Washington, D.C, a media disclosure of grade-tampering led to a state audit that showed that in the 2016 graduating class, grades for nearly 5,500 students were changed right before graduation over a two-year period.17
And just over the county line, the D.C. schools were also guilty of widespread fraud. A study disclosed, “One of every three graduates from the District’s public schools last year missed too many classes or improperly took make-up classes, undermining the validity of hundreds of diplomas.”18
Further manipulation occurs in states like Maryland that allow students who can’t pass the exit exams to substitute an alternate route: “bridge projects.” Maryland’s 39-page manual spells out so-called safeguards for what are called a “Bridge Plan for Academic Validation.”19 But the numbers of students who take them, and their easy nature, have grown to shameful proportions.
In Baltimore, as many as one-third of all students earning a regular diploma have done so via such bridge projects.20 I have represented several students who were in the 10th or 11th grade though reading at first, second or third grade levels. They had lost all motivation, did little work, intermittently caused trouble, and attended school sporadically. Yet, they passed courses and bridge projects as long as they professed interest in graduating, made some effort, and didn’t act out badly enough to warrant expulsion. As one teacher said to me, the bridge projects make jock courses for college athletes look rigorous.
Since fake grades and diplomas have been exposed nationwide, investigations will follow, followed by vows by school systems to stiffen requirements. But, as Robert Slavin points out, you would be better off buying the Brooklyn Bridge than believing much will change, as long as so many struggling learners are socially promoted through elementary, middle and high schools and lack the preparation to legitimately pass high school coursework.21
But there’s still much more of the cover-up to be uncovered
Fake grades and diplomas conceal the failure of struggling learners in general education and special education. Moreover in special education, the cover-up goes even deeper, where student achievement can be further inflated through “accommodations” and “modifications” on Individual Education Programs (IEPs).
“Accommodations” are intended to level the playing field, enabling students labeled as disabled to have “access” to the same curriculum as nondisabled peers, and to make progress in that curriculum.22 Accommodations are also necessary to enable students to demonstrate their true ability on tests despite their disabilities. But accommodations are not supposed to lower standards.
“Modifications” are supposed to be different. The Accommodations Manual published by The Council of Chief State School Officers puts it this way. “Accommodations do not reduce learning expectations. They provide access. However, modifications or alterations refer to practices that change, lower, or reduce learning expectations.”23
Clearly, modifications should be limited to students with significant cognitive or other disabilities who cannot be expected to meet regular academic standards. They should not be given to other students in special education—like students mislabeled as disabled—who, as we learned in Chapter 2, are able to meet regular standards if they receive adequate instruction and related services.
The difference shouldn’t be hard for school staff who develop IEPs to keep straight. But schools pay little heed. They do this because improper accommodations and modifications inflate grades. Schools look better though students are worse off. And the wrongdoing is rampant. Here’s how the system is rigged.
Proper accommodations vary for students. The most obvious example would be Braille or recorded text for students who are blind. But other accommodations, particularly for students who are not severely disabled, are not so straightforward. Chief among them is “read-aloud,” also known as “verbatim reading,” in which all or selected portions of lessons or tests are read to a student in special education who qualifies for the accommodation Another accommodation, almost always included on IEPs, is “extended time.” Other common accommodations are a calculator if a student’s disability affects basic mathematics, and a “scribe” if a student’s learning disability impedes written expression.
Accommodations enable students to overcome their big deficits in foundational skills of reading, math and writing. Assume Tyesha is now in the ninth grade with a Specific Learning Disability and reading skills at a third grade level. She couldn’t at that point read and comprehend on her own ninth grade textbooks and other materials in her literature, science, math and social studies courses. Unless found eligible for the read-aloud accommodation, she would not be able, as IDEA requires, to have “access to the general curriculum.” With the accommodation, she can listen to a recorded text or have someone read to her, and thus have a chance to keep up in class and earn passing grades.
However, most accommodations, particularly read-aloud, lose their legitimacy when used to cover up early deficits in foundational skills that should have been addressed through timely interventions. I have represented many students who were mislabeled as disabled and received the read-aloud accommodation as early as the first or second grades. One of them was Kenny who we met in the Preface and actually had materials read to him in the first grade. That is far too soon to put a struggling young reader on crutches that will almost surely impede development of independent skills. A writer on special education observes, “What is ‘special’ about reading to a youngster who should learn to read? Or providing a calculator, instead of teaching her ‘number facts’?”24
Yet, school systems do this all the time, while necessary intervention services are delayed or denied altogether. Almost invariably, students in special education don’t receive the “specially designed instruction” required by IDEA that would enable them to independently meet state standards in reading, mathematics and writing. Rather than being curbed, read-aloud accommodations are increasing nationally.
Improper modifications are also rampant though harder to spot. For example, the Baltimore school system provides school IEP teams with long checklists of what are known as “supplementary aids and services.” Most are classroom pieties such as “Check for understanding,” “Paraphrase questions and instruction,” and “Encourage student to ask for assistance when needed.” Such supplementary aids and services are obviously not special; rather they are instructional techniques that good teachers might employ with any student in general education as well as special education.
Yet, the checklists serve as open invitations for IEP teams to illegally lower standards for students who are not severely disabled. They contain an open-ended place for “Modified curriculum.” Further, the template for IEPs has a place for “Program Modification.”
Under these headings, it is not always easy to prove how teachers lower the standards. “Modification” can be a relative term, and it can be subtly embedded in daily instruction. Still, many students receive modified, dumbed-down assignments, content, and tests in ways that overstep proper boundaries.
There are simply too many reasons for teachers to do otherwise (same as with improper accommodations). They know many of their students are very far below grade level. They realize they are unable, despite their best efforts—because of huge teacher-student ratios, insufficient training and other constraints—to provide adequate instruction. They care deeply about their students (their “babies” as they often call them, whether in first grade or high school) and want to enable them in any way possible to achieve passing grades. And they are under intense explicit or implicit pressure from administrators to overuse accommodations and modifications to inflate the student’s, the school’s, and the school district’s test scores.
School administrators bury their heads in the sand. Teachers get little guidance or training on improper modifications and accommodations. Nor is there any monitoring to discover and correct wrongdoing. Out-and-out cheating creeps in too.
Honesty is not the best policy followed by some school systems when confronted with evidence of underachievement and cover-ups. There may be a fine line between misuse of accommodations and modifications and outright cheating on standardized tests that measure student proficiency. Outsiders have no real way of knowing how often the line is crossed. But we can be sure that dishonesty happens a lot.
Cheating in testing has been a national scourge for at least a decade.25 Usually it is rogue teachers and principals, occasionally reaching to central office. The urge to cheat is tempting since educators at all levels increasingly live or die professionally based on test scores. It is also easier than it should be because some top administrators adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude toward testing practices.
It is also easiest to pull off in special education. There are more opportunities to cheat because many students in special education are tested separately, individually or in small groups where they receive accommodations like read-aloud. Such a secluded setting is fertile ground for dishonesty. Baltimore school personnel sometimes whisper to me that it sometimes takes place.
That said, there is no doubt that only a tiny fraction of educators engages in outright cheating. Still, cheating—along with retentions, social promotion, diploma hoaxes, and improper accommodations and modifications—add up to a massive cover-up of student failure and educational abuse.
What will it take to improve instruction and close down the cover-ups? The next part of the book tells how it can be done.