It's just reaching Florida, I guess.
A few years ago I subbed a "developmental" class. They're lower in achievement and ability than "resource" classes, which are where you put the kids who aren't up to the level of being mainstreamed even with IEPs and co-teachers.
The lesson plan called for them to do equations for a line, y = mx + b.
The actual lesson was helping them to subtract numbers like 16 - 5. Apparently this was considered "review" and "scaffolding," preparatory to actually teaching them how to graph lines. After all, if you can't solve 16 - 5 you have no chance of dealing with y = 2x - 5 when x = 8. They never even got to dealing with 2 * 8 before they had to move on. Ahem.
This seems insane. But it's reasonable.
Originally these kids were ignored. So SCOTUS and then Congress said, "You must teach them."
So these kids were largely warehoused. And SCOTUS and then Congerss said, "You must teach them." When standardized tests came along, there were "ability group" tests kids could be given. That 13-year-old is working at a 8-year-old's academic level, you give him a test built for him at the right academic level instead of modifying the 13-year-old's test.
So programs were devised to teach them, some good some bad. But soon Congress told schools, "You must be held accountable, and the Pure and True Numbers That Reveal The Real Truth are the One True Standard for holding you accountable." Only modified standard tests were allowed--the One True Test to unite them all, but modified.
Then schools found that if they put the lowest achieving of the low achievers in SpEd classes or on IEPs they could eliminate the trailing, very low grades. And the One True Standard, the Holy Numbers from the One True Test, were suddenly higher.
SCOTUS and Congress, however, said that this was wrong. Some schools then failed to make AYP because suddenly they had too many kids taking modified standard tests. Too late to change all the IEPs, the kids took the modified tests but only a certain number of them could be counted. The remaining kids' test scores were counted as 0 for the purpose of school accountability (the test scores still counted towards the kids' graduation requirements--no kid was punished at that point). School learned real quick to revise those IEPs.
There was no way for either SCOTUS or Congress to distinguish between the Truly Worthy and the falsely CYA-SpEdified students so they hemmed and hawed and then said, "All students must be held to the same standards." The One True Test could no longer be modified. The following year the modified standard tests went away. That meant that all students had to be held to the same standards for teaching.
Some parents liked it. There are parents of kids whose future involve group homes and jobs "uniquely suited" to their (lack of) skills who are convinced that they will go to college. Kids with IQs < 80 who failed Algebra I but who passed a science class whose parents insist they go into pre-AP or AP science.
Some parents--including many of the parents that like it the first year--hated it.
Upshot: Schools gamed the system. To punish the schools and make them teach all kids at high standards every student has to be held to the same test. That means they have to be accountable to the same standards.
While every student is different and unique, with his/her own learning style and multiple intelligences, they all take the same test and get cookie-cuttered. Because every student can learn at cognitively high levels. Even if they're unmotivated, even if they're developmentally disabled, even if they're monolingual in Nepalese and put in a two-way Spanish/English bilingual immersion program at age 13 and need to take the standardized test (English only!) in 6 months.
And don't say that the data you get from such testing is bad. That's blaming the student, and that's never allowed. All data are good.
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