CAHSEE settlement would end exemption for disabled students 

Students with disabilities would no longer be granted an exemption from a requirement to pass the California High School Exit Exam under a tentative settlement agreement reached by the parties April 2.

The agreement in the Alameda County Superior Court case of Courtney Kidd, et al v. O’Connell, et al, formerly known as the Chapman case, stipulates that the California Department of Education must “identify and/or seek funding of $500,000” for an independent study that will evaluate why 48 percent of students with disabilities do not pass the CAHSEE despite taking the exam with modifications and accommodations for their disabilities. The pass rate for all students stands at 93 percent.

The settlement also specifies that if no funding is identified or obtained for the study within two months, the agreement would become nonbinding and the lawsuit could be reinstated. A judge still must approve the agreement for it to take effect.

Holly Jacobson, CSBA assistant executive director for Policy Analysis and Continuing Education, expressed disappointment with the decision to discontinue the exemption disabled students from passing the CAHSEE in order to graduate from high school.

"It does not make logical sense for students with disabilities to bear the consequences of CAHSEE while the state collects data to better understand if there is a problem with the assessment itself,” Jacobson said.

“What we know is that students with disabilities are failing the exam at an alarming rate. It should be the burden of the state to hold those students harmless until there is evidence that students failed the exam because they don't have mastery of the academic content required of high school graduates.

“At this time, we simply do not know if that is true,” Jacobson said.

If approved by the court, the settlement would end a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 on behalf of disabled students that asked for their exemption from a law that required them to pass CAHSEE, a test of English and mathematics, in order to graduate. The law took effect in 2006, but exemptions were granted for students with disabilities in the classes of 2006 and 2007.

The tentative agreement would not change current law that allows a disabled student to take the CAHSEE with accommodations or modifications specified in his or her Individual Education Plan or Section 504 accommodation plan, nor to obtain a waiver of the requirement to pass CAHSEE by taking one or both parts of the exam with a modification and receiving the equivalent of a passing score. If the student’s school district grants the waiver, and all other district graduation requirements are met, the student is eligible to graduate.