In the flood of dismaying statistics about American education, every once in while one bubbles to the surface that is so shocking it can scarcely be believed - even if you know it's true. Thus we learn that, among 8th grade New York City special ed students, the pass rates on state tests are 5 percent in math and 3.5 percent in reading. Fourth grade and high school results were a bit better, but in no grade did a majority of special ed students pass either test. If this were a survey or poll, we'd call the 8th grade results rounding errors. Unfortunately, they're fourteen-year-old kids whose lives are on a fast track to nowhere. Now, can we please drop the nonsense about how testing and accountability and standards and NCLB are destroying American education? Everyone knows that the vast majority of these kids - 12 percent of the city's students are in special ed - aren't disabled so much as pushed out by a system that has decided it can't, or won't, educate them.
"Staggering fail rate in special ed," by Kenneth Lovett and Carl Campanile, New York Post, May 19, 2004