Students at Sharp-Leadenhall Elementary, a Baltimore school for special education students with emotional disturbances, are at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to the No Child Left Behind law.
Depression, uncontrolled anger and high anxiety levels impaired their learning at schools with other students, yet the federal mandate requires they perform at the same academic level.
Many call the law backward and unfair, but students are proving the criteria can be achieved: The school showed tremendous improvement this year on the Maryland School Assessment, the state standardized test that measures whether students are performing up to No Child standards.
Test scores for the school rose 22 percentage points, from 43 percent meeting the proficient level on the test last year to 65 percent meeting it this year. The jump was among the city’s 20 largest this year on the test.
The school also reached this year’s adequate yearly progress benchmark for the first time in six years. If the school had continued to fail to meet the rising standard, it faced a complete replacement of staff.
Principal James Linde mainly attributed the school’s massive gains to rising attendance. “No student learns if they’re not in school,” he said, echoing a basic philosophy of city schools chief Andres Alonso, who watched the city’s attendance soar during his first year in office.
From throughout the city, 72 disabled students in kindergarten through fifth grade this year will travel by bus to the school, which is a few blocks east of M&T Bank Stadium. There are eight classes, creating close learning environments with nine students per class, where teachers can mentor students and help them cope with their emotional problems.
Students at the school must be emotionally disturbed up to federal standards, and their disability has to impair their work so much they cannot succeed in other schools.
Teachers call home each time a student misses one day of school, Linde said. If a student misses two or three days in a row, he said, a school employee goes to the student’s house.
Teachers also keep a point sheet to track students’ academic and behavioral performance and share the record with parents on a daily basis. In addition, a class is designated for counseling.
Still, Linde stressed, the school has the same curriculum as other schools, and students are held to the same standard.
He added: “We consider the facility here a therapeutic learning environment.”
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