Florida cries foul over high NAEP exclusion rates in other states (Like Kentucky)

Wants scores in high exclusion states suppressed

Add Florida’s Commissioner of Education to the growing list of those crying foul (such as discussed here for learning disabled students and here for students still learning English) over high exclusion rates of students with learning disabilities from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Kentucky led the nation in 2011 for the percentage of students NAEP wanted to test here that ultimately were excluded due to learning disabilities in both fourth and eighth grade NAEP reading. That has been getting us some unfavorable highlighting in the press such as a recent Education Week article, “Often Excluded, More Special-Needs Students Taking NAEP” (subscription).

Though not specifically mentioned by the Florida education commissioner, without question Kentucky falls among those states that Florida believes should not have scores released by the NAEP for comparison to other states. On this issue, I have to agree with Florida.

By the way, it is ironic that this NAEP issue surfaced in Education Week’s Curriculum Matters Blog only days after the Quality Counts report for 2012 was released by the same publisher. I’ll have more to say about the NAEP and Quality Counts in a day or two.