Click For Home PageInclusion Daily Express Logo

International Disability Rights News Service
Click here for today's headlines


Not a subscriber? Have the latest disability rights news delivered to your email Inbox every week day.
Subscribe to Inclusion Daily Express today!
Purchase this story for your website or newsletter . . .

Alaskan Students With Disabilities Win Exit Exam Accommodations
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
August 3, 2004

JUNEAU, ALASKA--Students with disabilities in Alaska will be given broad accommodations when taking the state's mandatory graduation exam, under a legal settlement announced Monday.

The settlement is the first of its kind and could affect reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities in the more than 20 other states that currently require students to pass a standardized test in order to graduate from high school with a diploma.

Under the agreement, which still needs to be approved by the court, students would be allowed to take extra breaks during the test, or take the test over several days. Students who fail the test could retake it and request certain accommodations, including clarification of test questions, the use of calculators and computerized spelling and grammar checkers, and to have test questions read out loud.

"This is the most constructive resolution that has ever been reached in a case of this nature," said attorney Sid Wolinsky, who represented the high school students in the class-action lawsuit against the Alaska Board of Education. "It is a win-win for everyone."

Wolinsky's Oakland, California-based firm, Disability Rights Advocates, sued the states of Oregon and California in 2000 and 2001 respectively, over their use of standardized tests as a graduation requirement. The issues brought up in the California case have not yet been resolved.

The suit was filed in March on behalf of five high school students claiming Alaska's new High School Graduation Qualifying Examination -- as it was then being implemented -- discriminated against them by making it more difficult for them to graduate and get a diploma. In April, the state decided to waive the requirement for students with disabilities in the 2004 graduating class while the Board negotiated the settlement.

The estimated 500 to 800 students with disabilities scheduled to graduate in 2005 could be granted a waiver from the test if the state and school districts have not set up the accommodations or modifications by this fall.

Related:
"State settles special-ed exam lawsuit" (Juneau Empire)
Disability Rights Advocates

Click here for top of this page

Here's what subscribers say about Inclusion Daily Express. . .


Get your news here!

Inclusion Daily Express
3231 W. Boone Ave., # 711
Spokane, Washington 99201 USA
Phone: 509-326-5811


News@InclusionDaily.com
Copyright © 2004 Inonit Publishing