Students with disabilities were largely excluded from state testing programs before changes to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997 and the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. A new report looks at how many schools were held accountable for the performance of students with disabilities when it comes to state tests. It shows that some of the fears about students with disabilities dragging down the performance of a school under the No Child Left Behind law weren’t realized.
But the new report from the Institute of Education Sciences says that in 37 states with relevant data, 9 percent of all public schools missed AYP during the 2008-09 school year because of how students with disabilities performed and at least one other reason, and only 5 percent missed it solely because of students with disabilities’ performance on state tests.
via Including, Excluding Students with Disabilities under NCLB.