ENLARGE

PHOTO: CORBIS

The mission of American education is “No Child Left Behind.” For me as a special-education teacher in New York state, that means making my students feel worthwhile and giving them the confidence they need to succeed—academically and socially. Yet New York’s statewide English language arts (ELA) and mathematics exams unduly humiliate children in special education and frustrate the teachers who want them to succeed.

The tests, administered to third- through eighth-graders over six days each spring, evaluate students on uniform Common Core State Standards that have been adopted by most states and emphasize critical thinking. As this newspaper reported in 2013, the first year the tests were administered, many children in New York state “ran out of time, collapsed in tears or froze up.” 

The unhappy result has been more students opting out of the tests altogether. According to the New York State Education Department, in 2014 49,000 and 67,000 students in the state skipped the ELA and math tests, respectively. And those figures are expected to climb this year.

If average and above students are struggling, imagine what it must be like for my students—children with severe dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome and other learning disabilities. These exams undermine my students’ hard-won confidence and tell them they can’t compete. What does the state learn from my students’ exam results? I can only think of one thing. It proves that they are not academically on grade level. But isn’t that the main reason they are in special-education classes in the first place? 

Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act, all students who receive special-educational services are entitled to a “free and appropriate” education. That education must be individualized and designed to meet the child’s unique needs. It is not appropriate to provide reading instruction that is three years above a special-education student’s grade level. Nor is it fair to ask a sixth-grade child with a learning disability who is struggling with basic math to take a test that includes evaluating algebraic expressions as well as other complex concepts. 

On average, my class of nine students is reading more than 21/2 years below grade level. Some have average intelligence, but they struggle to learn in the ways others do. 

One of my fifth-grade students spent his early school years frustrated and angry that he couldn’t read like everyone else. He felt defeated and disliked school. Yet with great patience and encouragement from his teachers, he can now read more than 200 words by sight and has begun to “crack the code,” applying phonemic awareness to unknown words to sound them out. His self-esteem has increased markedly and he has, for the first time, begun to enjoy reading. 

Then came the statewide exams, and six horrific days in my classroom. On the first day, he laid his head down on the desk as tears rolled down his face. He couldn’t understand a single question in the ELA test, let alone entire passages. The test is written on a fifth-grade level; he is reading on a first-grade level. 

Exam evaluators certainly won’t see the progress that he has made this year, jumping from reading a handful of words to hundreds. Nor will they see the recent joy on his mother’s face the day I asked him to read for her at our parent-teacher conference.

A much better approach—and one that gives teachers results that can be used to measure yearly growth and mastery, as well as determine future instruction—would be a test like the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). This computerized test is designed to increase or decrease in difficulty until the student gets a certain number of questions correct. This helps to determine his or her mastery and instructional levels. Additionally, this exam is able to take into account a student’s individual reading and mathematics level. The state English and math tests don’t—and are leaving special-education students behind.

Mr. Zorn is a special-education teacher in the Mineola Union Free School District in Mineola, N.Y.