Montgomery County Council Member Phil Andrews on Monday criticized public schools officials for using what he called “flawed data” in their decision earlier this year to close learning centers for special education students.
Andrews’ comments came after an update to the council’s education committee on a six-year phaseout of all special-ed centers in middle and high schools.
Learning center students who took state high school assessment tests failed at greater rates than their counterparts in regular courses, according to data provided at the briefing.
For example, of the 21 special-ed students who took the state’s algebra test, 19 percent, or four, passed. Of the 44 students in regular classes who took the test, 21, or 47.7 percent, passed.
But Andrews, a Democrat representing Rockville and Gaithersburg, argued that comparing those students is wrong because students in learning centers need extra help and are assigned to them for a reason.
“The school system still hasn’t given a satisfactory argument about why eliminating these centers was preferable to reforming them or improving them,” Andrews said Monday.
But the 42 sixth-graders who would have attended the centers this year have entered regular classes at their community school and are doing well, said Carey Wright, associate superintendent of the Office of Special Education and Student Services, and Gwendolyn Mason, director of the Department of Special Education.
“They were on task, they don’t look different than their peers and they are part of their classroom,” Mason told the education committee.
Neither Mason nor Wright could be reached for comment on Andrews’ criticisms Monday.
He said he wants to see data later this year to back up their claims.
The closure of the centers has caused an uproar among many parents of special-ed students, who say their children were well-served in the centers and would face difficulty in mainstream classes.
But school officials say the learning-center students were disproportionately black or Hispanic and fared worse on standardized state tests than special-ed children who had been mainstreamed.
