The Education Gadfly Weekly

National Center on Educational Outcomes

Written by Sandra Thompson and Director Martha L. Thurlow of the National Center on Educational Outcomes, which says it's dedicated to developing policies that include disabled students in accountability systems, this report provides a snapshot of where the 50 states stand with respect to special education and the standards movement. Based on an annual survey of state directors of special ed, it includes sections on: participation and performance; accommodations; alternate assessments; reporting; and emerging issues. Within the context of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Act, the report concludes that "the benefits of inclusive assessment and accountability systems are beginning to outweigh the challenges." A few results are particularly salient: 1) despite standards foes' glum predictions, more states listed positive consequences from inclusive accountability systems than negative; 2) disabled children's test participation rates are up in more than half of the states; and 3) two-thirds of the states reported stable or increased performance on state tests by disabled students. NCEO's research should be fodder for the upcoming congressional debate over IDEA reauthorization, and will also be of interest to anyone roaming the special ed maze. Copies of the report, which includes detailed appendices of state data, may be ordered for $15.00 from NCEO's Publications Office, 350 Elliot Hall, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455; phone 612-624-8561; fax 612-624-0879. Free copies are available at http://education.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/2001StateReport.html.

Achieve

Accountability: Turning Around Low-Performing Schools is published by Achieve, the group launched by governors and CEO's to promote standards-based education reform. This short policy brief offers recommendations for improving really bad schools. It explains how to identify those schools and how to go about assisting and/or reconstituting them. Another short new report, Standards and Accountability: Strategies for Sustaining Momentum, summarizes the proceedings of a two-day forum that Achieve organized to take stock of the standards movement and develop strategies for moving forward. Both papers can most easily be obtained by surfing to http://www.achieve.org/achieve/achievestart.nsf#policy_briefs or phoning Achieve at 202-624-1460.

James Madison Institute

The indefatigable Myron Lieberman is lead author of this 58-page report from the James Madison Institute. It turns out that Florida "is the only state in which collective bargaining has been recognized as a constitutional, not just a statutory, right of public employees." The study goes on to identify a number of problems and abuses in current teacher collective bargaining in the Sunshine State, such as PAC contributions via payroll deductions, school system subsidies of union operations, teachers' lack of choice among unions to represent them, excessive time devoted to collective bargaining, contracts that ignore problems of teacher scarcity, the exclusion of parents, and weak legislative oversight of all this. Numerous examples are supplied. If you'd like a copy, contact the James Madison Institute at 2017 Delta Blvd., Suite 102, P.O. Box 37460, Tallahassee, FL 32315. Phone (850) 386-3131, fax (850) 386-1807, e-mail [email protected], or surf to www.jamesmadison.org.

Disability Rights Advocates

An outfit named Disability Rights Advocates has issued this report on how to handle learning-disabled youngsters in high-stakes testing programs. Mostly it's an anti-testing screed that tells states what they must do under federal law to "accommodate" such youngsters and how not to penalize or disadvantage them. Oregon is cited as a case study-and gets much praise. Indeed, the report of a "blue ribbon panel" that examined Oregon's testing program from the perspective of L.D. children occupies more than half of this 46-page report. You may not want to bother. If you do, contact Disability Rights Advocates, 449 15th Street, Suite 303, Oakland, CA 94612. You can phone (510) 451-8644, fax (510) 451-8716, e-mail [email protected] or surf to www.dralegal.org.

National Center for Education Statistics

The National Center for Education Statistics has helped to fill a sizable information void with this twenty-page report on home schooling. Based on a household survey conducted in 1999, it supplies better data than we've ever had on how many homeschoolers there are and who they are. As of spring 1999, we learn, some 850,000 youngsters-about 1.7 percent of all U.S. schoolchildren-were being home schooled. Three quarters were white. Their family incomes were not appreciably different from the general population but parental education was higher. (Almost half the homeschoolers had a parent who was at least a college graduate, compared with about one third of non-homeschoolers.) They were somewhat more apt to have two parents at home-but less likely to have both parents working. (That probably explains why their family incomes are no higher even though the parents' education level is.) Homeschooling families are also larger: 62 percent have at least three children compared with 44 percent of non-homeschoolers. A particularly interesting finding is that almost one fifth of homeschooled children also attend a regular public or private school on a part-time basis. In other words, their schooling is a blend. The study also seeks to shed light on why parents decide to homeschool their children. The two leading reasons, by far, are the parents' belief that they can give their child a better a education, and religious reasons. You may want a copy for yourself. If so, the publication number is NCES 2001-033. The NCES staff contact is Stephen Broughman at (202) 502-7315 and [email protected]. The toll-free ordering number is (877) 4ED-PUBS. The NCES website is http://nces.ed.gov and the report itself can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001033.

National Center for Education Statistics and the National Assessment Governing Board

As everyone surely knows, the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Assessment Governing Board have just released the NAEP math results for spring 2000. (By NAEP standards, it's regarded as speedy to get results out just 15 months after the testing is concluded!) There is a huge trove of data here and, like the blind men's elephant, you can perceive it in many ways. If you'd like to show good news, note that 4th and 8th grade scores are rising and that several states are narrowing the black-white gap. If you'd like to show bad news, point out that 12th grade scores are down and that, for the nation as a whole, the majority-minority gaps are wider, even as black and Hispanic youngsters make gains. Many states can find something to celebrate-40 of them took part this time-but few can find unadulterated good news in these data and some (such as California) have to spin hard to find any. Private schools continue to outscore public but non-Catholic private schools showed a downturn in grades 4 and 12, while improving in 8th grade. (If you dig into the NAEP website-see below-you will also find data on several subsets of private schools that have never been separately reported before. These didn't make it into the hard copy report.) In sum, you will surely want to see for yourself. The main report, numbered NCES 2001-517, can be ordered from Education Publications Center, U.S. Department of Education, P.O. Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794. You can phone (877) 433-7827 or order it through the Internet at www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs/html. You can find the report itself on the web at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/mathematics/results. A short "highlights" report, available from the same places, is publication number NCES 2001-518. And you can obtain the comments of members of the National Assessment Governing Board, as well as important background information (such as the "framework" around which this assessment was constructed), by going to www.nagb.org. Finally, an interactive data analysis tool is available online at http://www.nces.ed.gov/statchat

Ethan Allen Institute

A new report by John McClaughry of Vermont's Ethan Allen Institute takes aim at Act 60, the controversial 1997 state education finance law passed after the Vermont Supreme Court ordered equalization of school spending. McLaughry contends that Act 60 is unsustainable and urges Vermonters to embrace an altogether different remedy: granting families the right to pick their children's schools. He notes that the Green Mountain State has a long history of parental choice. Since 1869, towns that do not have their own public high school have been able to use state money to send children to private schools. McClaughry suggests that Vermont respond to the Court's mandate-and the troubles that have followed from Act 60-by providing "tuition certificates" with which parents could choose from a range of public schools. Meanwhile, aid for home schooling would also be made available and Student Tuition Organizations, financed through a 90% tax credit, would provide scholarships to private schools for interested parents. Changing the education system in these ways, the author says, would not require higher property taxes. The report can be ordered from the Ethan Allen Institute by phoning (802) 695-1448. It can also be viewed by surfing to http://www.ethanallen.org/index3.html and clicking on "School Children First."-

Institute for Educational Leadership

In the early 1930's, philanthropist Charles Mott and educator Frank Manley envisioned "a lighted schoolhouse" where parents, students, schools and community organizations could work collaboratively. Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education began funding 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) in hopes of providing safe, cost-effective havens for children, youth and their families after school and on weekends. These centers vary, but typically they host a range of activities including tutoring, drug intervention programs, field trips, and literacy and computer classes for adults. The Institute for Educational Leadership examined the effectiveness, obstacles and next steps for 21st CCLCs and found that the hardest part is establishing true collaborative governance among communities, learning centers, and schools. Because these federal grants are distributed solely to public schools, school system administrators often have the final say in decisions. The report recommends continued funding for the learning centers with priority given to those that create sustained partnerships between communities and schools. You can order a copy of this report by writing, faxing or emailing: The Institute for Educational Leadership, 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20036, phone: (202) 822-8405, fax: (202) 872-4050, [email protected]. Copies cost $5.00.

Teach for America teachers perform as well or better than other teachers employed by the Houston Independent School District, according to an independent study by CREDO, a research group based at Stanford's Hoover Institution. An editorial in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution argues that Georgia should also open its doors to prospective teachers like these. Read "Houston: A Teaching Success Story" in The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, August 2, 2001 at http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/thursday/opinion.html . The CREDO study can be downloaded at http://credo.stanford.edu/working_papers.htm.

A random confluence of events can sometimes be clarifying. That happened to me one day last week. What got clarified was why U.S. kids aren't learning enough.

The morning brought fresh evidence that they're not: the 2000 NAEP math results. As you have read elsewhere (and can read below), while NAEP showed some gains (in grades 4 and 8, not 12), overall scores remain lamentable. The number of "proficient" youngsters is way too low while the proportion "below basic" is far too large. Although black and Hispanic students gained, for the country as a whole the majority-minority gaps actually widened. Once again, it's starkly clear that, if we're serious about leaving no child behind, urgent and profound changes must be made, above all by focusing schools more tightly on fundamental skills and knowledge in key subjects.

The same evening, I gained an insight into why that's not happening. The event was a VIP preview screening of a new documentary that PBS will air in early September. Entitled "The First Year," and produced by up-and-coming young filmmaker Davis Guggenheim with funding from the Getty Foundation, this 80 minute show-which is already beginning to elicit adulatory reviews-profiles five young teachers during their first classroom year in inner city Los Angeles schools.

The quintet is appealing, earnest, ardent, compassionate, sometimes heroic and generally noble. The well-wrought, skillfully edited film does a fine job of picturing many of the challenges that face a young teacher during his/her novice year on the job.

Plenty of kids are portrayed, too, including some who are winsome and lovable, many with problems, some in trouble. Nearly all are poor and minority, the very populations that NAEP tells us have farthest to go if not to be left behind.

But what actually happens in the classrooms that we see in this film? What do teaching and schooling consist of? Certainly not the three "R's" or other academic subjects. The viewer witnesses just a few seconds of conventional "content" as one of the teachers gives a mildly disabled youngster extra help with reading and arithmetic. Nowhere do we observe anyone teaching-or learning-history or geography, science or literature, grammar or composition, nor any math beyond the addition of single digits.

Instead, there is applied civics: a class of recent immigrants taught to lobby the budget-stressed school board for more money to preserve their non-mainstream classes. And there is human relations: much footage of a teacher trying to purge her high school students of their anti-gay prejudices.

But there's no conventional subject matter in core subjects, essentially none of the skills and knowledge prescribed in state standards and examined by state tests. Indeed, the film's testing sequence consists of a concerned new teacher prepping his pupils for California's statewide Stanford 9 administration not by cramming them with vocabulary words and math facts but by trying to relax them so they're not stressed. A compassionate thing to do, sure. Yet the film's message is that testing is something that gives stomach aches to innocent children, something utterly disconnected from the essence of schooling, and something that, thank God, was not being used for "high stakes" purposes, at least not that time. As a colleague of mine later remarked, "It's amazing that the [education] world is up in arms about kids being 'taught to the test' when right now, it appears from this film, they're being taught everything BUT what should be tested!"

Perhaps it's no coincidence that this documentary was created with much help from the California State University system, whence cometh most of the state's new teachers. For one way to characterize the film is "the first year of teaching as seen through ed school eyes." It brims with issues that concern teacher preparation programs: how to individualize instruction, how to meet the needs of troubled children, how to get a new teacher the help he/she requires, how tough it can be to fight the bureaucracy, how vexing are those tests, how challenging those parents, how prejudiced those adolescents, how miserly the system, how overcrowded its schools. But, as we have also come to expect from colleges of education, it has little to do with skills and knowledge in core subjects. The first year of teaching is revealed to the viewer-and presumably to the future teachers who are supposed to be attracted by watching it-as not about content, not about academics, not about helping kids meet standards.

At least two other preview attendees noticed, too. Not long ago, both were themselves first-year teachers in inner-city schools. One commented that the film contains a "subtle and insidious message: that what poor and minority children need from their teachers is empathy and help solving personal problems. That teaching is largely 'affective' rather than 'intellectual' work."

We watched this preview with an elite Washington audience in the posh surroundings of the Motion Picture Association of America. We nibbled wee crab cakes and sipped chardonnay. After the showing, those assembled had a chance to question the producer and one of the five young teachers-an admirable and attractive young man. Yet nobody said a word about the absence of education from these 80 minutes of skillfully edited footage about teaching. I don't believe most of the audience even noticed.

What will cause our NAEP scores ever to rise-and achievement gaps to narrow-if neither the places that prepare our teachers, nor influential filmmakers and "public broadcasters," nor sophisticated members of the viewing public regard it as odd to make a movie about teaching that has essentially nothing to do with learning the things that our children most need to get from their teachers and their schools?

For more about "The First Year," go to www.pbs.org/firstyear/.

For more about the 2000 NAEP results, scroll down to "Short Reviews of New Reports and Books."

The movement to link teacher pay to performance in the classroom has taken several giant steps forward this year-in Iowa, Arizona, and Toledo, just to name a few places-but it took two steps back last week. In California, hundreds of teachers rejected $600 bonuses awarded to employees at schools that have demonstrated significant improvement in test scores as part of the state's new accountability system, donating their rewards to charity instead. In Cincinnati, where a much-praised and -studied union contract negotiated last year called for teachers' pay to be linked to their performance, the union president who backed the plan has been ousted and the new leadership is calling for the district to overhaul the system.

What's notable about both setbacks is that the arguments made by teachers (and those who represent them) reveal just how far educators are from accepting practices that are commonplace in nearly every line of work.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle last week, some California teachers call the performance bonuses "bribes" and "blood money" that pit colleagues against each other. Faculty at one school object that the bonuses suggest that "teachers have somehow been holding out on their students in order to get test-score related compensation." Another teacher insists, "Every teacher I know works hard to help students succeed. If we've been more successful at Lowell, or had more motivated students, does that make our efforts more worthwhile?" These complaints boil down to the idea that teachers are all equally saintly in their devotion and thus should be rewarded equally, and that offering them more money could not possibly influence their motivation since they are all working as hard as humanly possible.

In Cincinnati, some teachers who have gone through the first phase of an elaborate (and union-devised) evaluation system now complain that the evaluations are too subjective and it's unclear what is expected of them. Forty six percent of union members voted against beginning the evaluation process before it was even started. A survey by the Cleveland Teachers Union found that two thirds of its teachers were opposed to pay-for-performance, and only 18 percent favored such a plan even if it were done fairly. This amounts to a rejection of the very principle of paying teachers based on how effective they are.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer gets it exactly right in a recent editorial: "Rewarding teachers who excel is crucial to professionalizing the field, and in turn for getting practitioners proper respect." Some of the points made by teachers have merit, "but not as much merit as the public's distaste for an education system that pays teachers not for what they know or do, but merely according to how much time they have spent in a classroom. That antiquated seniority system undermines every effort to portray teaching as a profession, complete with all of the intellectual and emotional challenges the term implies."

"Teachers rejecting test score bonuses," by Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2001

"Teachers balk at evaluations in Cincinnati," by Scott Stevens, Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 30, 2001

"Merit Pay," Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 4, 2001

Almost everyone agrees that schools of education need an overhaul and Martin Kozloff, a reform-minded professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, explains how this should happen in a manifesto posted on EducationNews.org. He calls on state governments to mandate changes in the way ed schools train teachers, to provide a model of a research-based curriculum, and to hold ed schools accountable. Read more in "A Direct and Focused Approach," EducationNews.org, July 2001, at http://www.educationnews.org/a_direct_and_focused_approach_ne.htm

Senator Edward M. Kennedy shocked and disappointed many fellow Democrats with his willingness to compromise with the Bush administration on ESEA. Refusing to take a back seat to "new" Democrats in negotiations with the administration, Kennedy eventually accepted a version of the "Straight A's" program which would allow some states a measure of flexibility in how they spend their federal dollars. Some say this move was pure politics, some say pride, some say an attempt to salvage moderation in the education bill. Decide for yourself after reading "Teddy Bear," by Michael Crowley, The New Republic, August 13, 2001 at http://www.thenewrepublic.com/081301/crowley081301.html .

Last week, New Leaders for New Schools introduced its first corps of urban principals, highly-qualified individuals without standard principal credentials who have been given special training and served apprenticeships under master principals before taking the reins of their own schools. Solving the principal shortage will require districts to embrace innovative strategies like this. To learn more about this program-a "Teach for America" for principals-see "How to Fix the Coming Principal Shortage," by Andrew Goldstein, Time.com, July 30, 2001 at http://www.time.com/time/education/article/0,8599,168379,00.html .

Achieve

Accountability: Turning Around Low-Performing Schools is published by Achieve, the group launched by governors and CEO's to promote standards-based education reform. This short policy brief offers recommendations for improving really bad schools. It explains how to identify those schools and how to go about assisting and/or reconstituting them. Another short new report, Standards and Accountability: Strategies for Sustaining Momentum, summarizes the proceedings of a two-day forum that Achieve organized to take stock of the standards movement and develop strategies for moving forward. Both papers can most easily be obtained by surfing to http://www.achieve.org/achieve/achievestart.nsf#policy_briefs or phoning Achieve at 202-624-1460.

Disability Rights Advocates

An outfit named Disability Rights Advocates has issued this report on how to handle learning-disabled youngsters in high-stakes testing programs. Mostly it's an anti-testing screed that tells states what they must do under federal law to "accommodate" such youngsters and how not to penalize or disadvantage them. Oregon is cited as a case study-and gets much praise. Indeed, the report of a "blue ribbon panel" that examined Oregon's testing program from the perspective of L.D. children occupies more than half of this 46-page report. You may not want to bother. If you do, contact Disability Rights Advocates, 449 15th Street, Suite 303, Oakland, CA 94612. You can phone (510) 451-8644, fax (510) 451-8716, e-mail [email protected] or surf to www.dralegal.org.

Ethan Allen Institute

A new report by John McClaughry of Vermont's Ethan Allen Institute takes aim at Act 60, the controversial 1997 state education finance law passed after the Vermont Supreme Court ordered equalization of school spending. McLaughry contends that Act 60 is unsustainable and urges Vermonters to embrace an altogether different remedy: granting families the right to pick their children's schools. He notes that the Green Mountain State has a long history of parental choice. Since 1869, towns that do not have their own public high school have been able to use state money to send children to private schools. McClaughry suggests that Vermont respond to the Court's mandate-and the troubles that have followed from Act 60-by providing "tuition certificates" with which parents could choose from a range of public schools. Meanwhile, aid for home schooling would also be made available and Student Tuition Organizations, financed through a 90% tax credit, would provide scholarships to private schools for interested parents. Changing the education system in these ways, the author says, would not require higher property taxes. The report can be ordered from the Ethan Allen Institute by phoning (802) 695-1448. It can also be viewed by surfing to http://www.ethanallen.org/index3.html and clicking on "School Children First."-

Institute for Educational Leadership

In the early 1930's, philanthropist Charles Mott and educator Frank Manley envisioned "a lighted schoolhouse" where parents, students, schools and community organizations could work collaboratively. Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education began funding 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) in hopes of providing safe, cost-effective havens for children, youth and their families after school and on weekends. These centers vary, but typically they host a range of activities including tutoring, drug intervention programs, field trips, and literacy and computer classes for adults. The Institute for Educational Leadership examined the effectiveness, obstacles and next steps for 21st CCLCs and found that the hardest part is establishing true collaborative governance among communities, learning centers, and schools. Because these federal grants are distributed solely to public schools, school system administrators often have the final say in decisions. The report recommends continued funding for the learning centers with priority given to those that create sustained partnerships between communities and schools. You can order a copy of this report by writing, faxing or emailing: The Institute for Educational Leadership, 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20036, phone: (202) 822-8405, fax: (202) 872-4050, [email protected]. Copies cost $5.00.

James Madison Institute

The indefatigable Myron Lieberman is lead author of this 58-page report from the James Madison Institute. It turns out that Florida "is the only state in which collective bargaining has been recognized as a constitutional, not just a statutory, right of public employees." The study goes on to identify a number of problems and abuses in current teacher collective bargaining in the Sunshine State, such as PAC contributions via payroll deductions, school system subsidies of union operations, teachers' lack of choice among unions to represent them, excessive time devoted to collective bargaining, contracts that ignore problems of teacher scarcity, the exclusion of parents, and weak legislative oversight of all this. Numerous examples are supplied. If you'd like a copy, contact the James Madison Institute at 2017 Delta Blvd., Suite 102, P.O. Box 37460, Tallahassee, FL 32315. Phone (850) 386-3131, fax (850) 386-1807, e-mail [email protected], or surf to www.jamesmadison.org.

National Center for Education Statistics

The National Center for Education Statistics has helped to fill a sizable information void with this twenty-page report on home schooling. Based on a household survey conducted in 1999, it supplies better data than we've ever had on how many homeschoolers there are and who they are. As of spring 1999, we learn, some 850,000 youngsters-about 1.7 percent of all U.S. schoolchildren-were being home schooled. Three quarters were white. Their family incomes were not appreciably different from the general population but parental education was higher. (Almost half the homeschoolers had a parent who was at least a college graduate, compared with about one third of non-homeschoolers.) They were somewhat more apt to have two parents at home-but less likely to have both parents working. (That probably explains why their family incomes are no higher even though the parents' education level is.) Homeschooling families are also larger: 62 percent have at least three children compared with 44 percent of non-homeschoolers. A particularly interesting finding is that almost one fifth of homeschooled children also attend a regular public or private school on a part-time basis. In other words, their schooling is a blend. The study also seeks to shed light on why parents decide to homeschool their children. The two leading reasons, by far, are the parents' belief that they can give their child a better a education, and religious reasons. You may want a copy for yourself. If so, the publication number is NCES 2001-033. The NCES staff contact is Stephen Broughman at (202) 502-7315 and [email protected]. The toll-free ordering number is (877) 4ED-PUBS. The NCES website is http://nces.ed.gov and the report itself can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001033.

National Center for Education Statistics and the National Assessment Governing Board

As everyone surely knows, the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Assessment Governing Board have just released the NAEP math results for spring 2000. (By NAEP standards, it's regarded as speedy to get results out just 15 months after the testing is concluded!) There is a huge trove of data here and, like the blind men's elephant, you can perceive it in many ways. If you'd like to show good news, note that 4th and 8th grade scores are rising and that several states are narrowing the black-white gap. If you'd like to show bad news, point out that 12th grade scores are down and that, for the nation as a whole, the majority-minority gaps are wider, even as black and Hispanic youngsters make gains. Many states can find something to celebrate-40 of them took part this time-but few can find unadulterated good news in these data and some (such as California) have to spin hard to find any. Private schools continue to outscore public but non-Catholic private schools showed a downturn in grades 4 and 12, while improving in 8th grade. (If you dig into the NAEP website-see below-you will also find data on several subsets of private schools that have never been separately reported before. These didn't make it into the hard copy report.) In sum, you will surely want to see for yourself. The main report, numbered NCES 2001-517, can be ordered from Education Publications Center, U.S. Department of Education, P.O. Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794. You can phone (877) 433-7827 or order it through the Internet at www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs/html. You can find the report itself on the web at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/mathematics/results. A short "highlights" report, available from the same places, is publication number NCES 2001-518. And you can obtain the comments of members of the National Assessment Governing Board, as well as important background information (such as the "framework" around which this assessment was constructed), by going to www.nagb.org. Finally, an interactive data analysis tool is available online at http://www.nces.ed.gov/statchat

National Center on Educational Outcomes

Written by Sandra Thompson and Director Martha L. Thurlow of the National Center on Educational Outcomes, which says it's dedicated to developing policies that include disabled students in accountability systems, this report provides a snapshot of where the 50 states stand with respect to special education and the standards movement. Based on an annual survey of state directors of special ed, it includes sections on: participation and performance; accommodations; alternate assessments; reporting; and emerging issues. Within the context of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Act, the report concludes that "the benefits of inclusive assessment and accountability systems are beginning to outweigh the challenges." A few results are particularly salient: 1) despite standards foes' glum predictions, more states listed positive consequences from inclusive accountability systems than negative; 2) disabled children's test participation rates are up in more than half of the states; and 3) two-thirds of the states reported stable or increased performance on state tests by disabled students. NCEO's research should be fodder for the upcoming congressional debate over IDEA reauthorization, and will also be of interest to anyone roaming the special ed maze. Copies of the report, which includes detailed appendices of state data, may be ordered for $15.00 from NCEO's Publications Office, 350 Elliot Hall, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455; phone 612-624-8561; fax 612-624-0879. Free copies are available at http://education.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/2001StateReport.html.