Dear Editor - Department of Education's Fake Research Driving Policy Change - Special Education

Dear Utah State School Board,

The USOE said that recent NCLB "final rule" changes to special education, which remove all vestiges of state authority over special education's testing and curriculum, do not affect Utah students.  This statement does not seem to match reality.  I wrote to you about it, but nobody responded.

https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/usoe-letter-tells-state-board-all-is-well-all-is-well-in-special-ed/

Now, I have just learned that the USDOE is using fake research to justify the NCLB "final rule" changes and I wanted to make sure that you were aware of this, as well.  I certainly hope someone will respond to this email.

When Dr. Gary Thompson, a Utah clinical child psychologist, read the US Department of Education's "Final Rule" under the new No Child Left Behind, he learned, as we all did:

"The Secretary amends the regulations... to no longer authorize a State to define modified academic achievement standards and develop alternate assessments based on those modified academic achievement standards..."

You may recall that Dr. Thompson years ago exposed the non-validity of the Common Core tests themselves, as a scientist and as an expert on children's mental health and mental health testing, and was ignored by USOE/USSB; he has now written an analysis of the federal "Final Rule" on special ed, entitled "Primum Non Nocere: First Do No Harm."  I wonder if any of you have read it.  I have.  It reveals that the USDOE Final Rule of NCLB is based on fake research.

The Final Rule takes effect September 15, 2015, and will affect Utah's special education students and teachers dramatically.  But who's read it?  

Because so few people read the USDOE's ruling, and fewer still read Dr. Thompson's analysis: "Primum Non Nocere: First Do No Harm," Dr. Thompson wrote a follow-up,  making the USDOE's fake research  clear. Here was his analogy: 

Imagine that a parent takes a sick child to the doctor's office and the doctor prescribes eating "Froot Loops" three times each day while watching "SouthPark" episodes.  The doctor justifies this with research taken from the journal of gynecology, and demands that the parent comply.

The US Department of ED has similarly decreed absurd decrees about special education and has based them on nonvalid research studies.  First, here are its decrees:

1. All learning-disabled students can become grade level scholars with no differentiated learning-- they just need great teaching and great supports.

2. The new testing (Common Core/SAGE) is valid for ALL students with ALL learning disabilities.

3. These new tests are so good that we don’t need alternative or modified tests.

4. The ONLY thing reading and math disabled students need, to become grade level scholars, are good teachers.

5. These new tests are so perfect that they were designed specifically to perfectly measure academic achievement in ALL learning-disabled children.

6. States and ground-level teachers have denied proper instruction for divergent-learning students; therefore, we no longer need individual states to make special tests, because now special education students will be saved by the new Common Core Standards.

Dr. Thompson  went to each cited research journal itself, and found:

That in every case, the research was either directly paid for by the USDOE and its partners, or it did not qualify as research because it had never been peer reviewed, or it tested one age or ability grouping of children but applied the findings to a different age or ability grouping;  or the decree/claim was not even linked to any research study whatsoever.  This is outrageous.

Below are just three sample highlights from Dr. Thompson's "Primum Non Nocere" that stood out as I read the 44-page analysis.

I hope that our state board will take a stand to prosecute this USDOE deceit and fraud-- because we still care about academic honesty, because we still believe in local, not dictatorial, control of education, and especially because we still care about not hurting innocent children.

US Department of Education Fraudulent Conclusion - Number One:

To support the Department's decree, that special education students don't need special education, USDOE cited a 2010 research journal article: "Do Special Education Interventions Improve Learning of Secondary Content? A MetaAnalysis."  Dr. Thompson went to that research journal.

Guess what he found there?

• That research didn't include kindergarteners through fifth graders--  no elementary school aged children were studied!  Most of the students were in eighth grade.  --Yet the Department is applying their conclusion to all students.
• The "study" was paid for by the US Department of Education.
• Math and reading weren't included.  The studies used science, social studies, and English; and, only 10% of those studies actually reported on English at all.  --Yet the Department includes math and reading in its approved Common tests, to be applied to all, now including special education students.
• Most of the students included in the meta-analysis were of average I.Q.  Yet the Department is applying their conclusion to special education.
• Virtually none of the students were behaviorally or emotionally disturbed (only 4%)  Yet the Department is applying their conclusion to special education students who are behaviorally or emotionally disturbed.
• It was not an original research study.  It was a holistic, literary study of other studies.
• Demographics were lacking, so nobody knows how these studies impact children who come from groups who historically test very poorly.

US Department of Education Fraudulent Conclusion - Number Two:

To support the Department of Education's decree that special education students will benefit from taking Common Core/SAGE tests,  it claimed that "new assessments have been designed to facilitate the valid, reliable, and fair assessment of most students, including students with disabilities who previously took an alternate assessment".

Guess what Dr. Thompson found?

• There was no research study cited.
• There was no evidence given.
• The claim that these new tests have been designed to be fair and valid and reliable for special education students, is utterly baseless.
• Not one of the Common Core testing consortia, funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (such as SBAC, PARCC, and AIR which designs Utah's SAGE test) have published independently reviewed validity data on special education students (or any students for that matter).

US Department of Education Fraudulent Conclusion - Number Three:

To support the Department's decree that "alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards are no longer needed," the Department cited a  study that (surprise) was also paid for by the US Department of Education-- in partnership with the CCSSO, the group that co-created Common Core.  This study was never peer-reviewed, and thus qualifies as propaganda rather than real scientific research.

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Other studies, that were also used as references by the USDOE, openly urged "caution in interpretation of our findings given the small number of participants," and warned: "no instructional method, even those validated using randomized control studies, works for all students” -- serious cautions that the USDOE clearly did not heed.

I urge you to take a stand against this fraud as well as a stand against the federal takeover of the rights of our state, of special education teachers, and parents of students in special education.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Christel Swasey

Teacher/Mother

Pleasant Grove

https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/fake-research-used-to-remove-authority-from-states-over-special-education-testing-and-curriculum/