To look at this achievement gap in more detail, it is easier to focus on a case study of one Massachusetts school. King Philip Regional High school<\/a> (KP) is a public high school composed of three Massachusetts towns (Norfolk, Wrentham, and Plainville). It is not diverse in regard to race and ethnicity (91.4% white); however, 12.7% of its students have disabilities (defined as a student with an individual education plan). King Philip is relatively representative of the proportion of students with disabilities, as there is currently around 17.6% of Massachusetts students with disabilities enrolled in school.<\/p>\n For 2018, Massachusetts reported large gaps of passing scores<\/a> (advanced or proficient scores) on grade 10 MCAS between students with disabilities compared to those without. These gaps range from 25% to 43% depending on the subject. For King Philip in particular, the gaps in 2018 were either less or equal to the state (see, Figure 1). In particular, there is a much smaller gap present in English Language Arts (ELA) for King Philip. While ELA is the smallest gap for both the state and King Philip, KP only had an 11% difference between their student with and without disabilities compared to the 25% gap in the state. Another point of interest within KP high would be the stark difference in performance of math and science compared to that ELA. Specifically, only 58% of students with disabilities are passing the mathematics MCAS. While this percentage is higher than the 41% passing rate in the state, it is still very alarming<\/p>\n To examine how and why King Philip High performed better than the state in the 2018 MCAS, I surveyed public information about what KP has done for their students with disabilities. First, the smaller achievement gap as well as the higher rates of passing for students in KP compared to Massachusetts as a whole can most likely be attributed to the demographics of the school. Again, it is important to note that the majority of KP students are from white, upper-class families (see 2018 Demographics<\/a>). As much research<\/a> has shown, the achievement gap in performance is affected both by race\/ethnicity and by socioeconomic status. Such that students from high income homes, will have higher parental involvement; and thus, might have parents advocating more for their accommodations.<\/p>\n Focusing solely on King Philip, it does not seem like they do anything above and beyond what the state requires through the IDEA. In regard to funding, the district voted to increase the application of excess and deficiency funds, which should have restored a position of an academic support teacher. Also, KP offers the regular auxiliary aids and services for students with disabilities (e.g., notes, extra time). Both of these do not aid the students more than the state as a whole requires.<\/p>\n Of surprise, given the number of students reaching proficiency in standardized scores compared to the state, KP students with disabilities are attending school 8% less than other students (chronic absenteeism for those with disabilities is 19.5%). In regard to coursework, only 25.4% of students with disabilities are taking advanced coursework compared to the 78.3% of all students. Therefore, students with disabilities may be hitting the proficiency standards, but King Philip is not setting them up for their future and may be contributing to the maintenance of this achievement gap.<\/p>\n King Philip is by far no master compared to the state at closing the achievement gap for students with disabilities; however, due to the advantages these students have, not with the resources provided by the school, but rather by being in the majority in both in race\/ethnicity and in high socioeconomic status allows them to continue to do better than the overall state in standardized tests.<\/p>\n Post by: Maggie Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIf a child can\u2019t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn\u201d \u2013 Ignacio Estrada. This sentiment is often discussed in regard to the education of students with disabilities, however, talk is often just that \u2013 talk and no action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[50446,115176,457064],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/files\/2019\/02\/Picture1-e1551390564232.png\")
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