Montgomery County school officials have said poor performance on state exams by special education students is one reason they want to phase out the district’s secondary learning centers. But most middle schools with learning centers met state goals this year.
Some special education parents say this runs counter to school officials’ claims that learning centers aren’t working.
A recent memo from Superintendent of Schools Jerry Weast said “one of the most compelling reasons for phasing out the secondary learning centers is the lagging academic performance of secondary learning center students.” However, Montgomery Village Middle School was the only one of the county’s five middle schools with a learning center that failed to meet goals this year, information released by the state Wednesday shows.
“It makes us question what is the real reason for doing away with the learning centers,” said Jeanne Taylor, parent of a special education student who attends an elementary school learning center.
“We do believe educating students in the least restrictive environment and giving them greater access to the general education curriculum will benefit these students,” MCPS spokesman Brian Edwards said in an e-mail.
Taylor and other parents of special education students have said they feared school officials wanted to eliminate learning centers so no school would have a high concentration of special needs students and the test scores of special needs students would be spread out over the county’s schools.
“When scores are spread out across that population,” Taylor said, “it’s harder for a clump of students to bring down the whole school.”
In previous interviews with The Examiner, Montgomery County associate superintendent for special education Carey Wright has said the parents’ assumptions are wrong.
“In order for a school to make adequate yearly progress, every subgroup of students must meet objectives set by the state,” Wright said. “It only takes five students to constitute a subgroup in Maryland, so when you’re dealing with 17,000 special education students across a district, it’s hard not to come up with a subgroup at a school.”
