This practice was established to provide districts an incentive to include more students with disabilities in the statewide assessment program, which is associated with high expectations for students. It may also provide an inadvertent incentive to identify students to receive special education services and may partially explain recent growth in special education programs. However, enrollment in special education programs has been growing for at least 15 years, not just the past three. TAAS exemptions reported on the AEIS reports for the first time in 1995-96 were intended to provide districts and campuses with a further incentive to include students in the statewide assessment program. Also, for the first time following administration of the 1994-95 TAAS, the tests were released to comply with a new state law, which may have provided districts and campuses with better information on which to base exemption decisions.
Exemptions vary by subject.
Mathematics has the fewest exemptions, with 58 percent of students tested. Some accommodations, such as oral administration, are allowed on mathematics that would invalidate other tests. Performance on the reading and writing tests declined slightly, from 47 to 44 percent passing reading and 45 to 43 percent passing writing. Lower scores are sometimes associated with an increase in the number of students tested because more students of varying abilities are tested. Statewide, there were higher gains on the mathematics test for nondisabled students as well.