Dinowitz asks whether students with disabilities will have different standards or rubrics

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Joseph.

I'm going to ask, I just have one question because it was brought up about students with disabilities.

With the Regents exams, students with disabilities, students with an IEP, did not necessarily have to pass every Regents.

They could do a combination of getting a little lower than a 65, right, if they made up for it in other tests.

The details of which I don't remember, that's the general sense, right?

There was sort of different standards.

Is the intention of the DOE to similarly have different standards for students with disabilities?

Or will students with disabilities be held to the same rigorous standards as students without an IEP?

All of our students need to be held to extremely high standards.

That was a good answer.

My question, that was a great answer.

My question is, will there be a different rubric for students with disabilities, or will they be held to the same rubric?

You can use that language.

I think what the rubrics do is they set the expectation.

I think what's really important that our schools do and their teachers do is to really lean into this idea that there are multiple forms of assessment and multiple ways for the students to be able to demonstrate what it is that they know.

Right.

So you have the standards.

You have the rubric that lays out in the plain language.

And then we say to students, what are the different ways that we think is crucial for you to be able to demonstrate that?

And we have a long history of doing that here in the city.

And in fact, when we move away, when we begin to decouple the exams, we begin to say there are many other ways for the students to be able to demonstrate that particular skill.

I just want to pause.

I agree with you.

Right.

It's one of the reasons I love the idea of the portrait.

But we have seen on IEPs.

A student has to get 30.

percent of the third, fourth, fifth grade curriculum, often to, I believe, to their detriment, because then they get to the later grades in the high school.

We don't have that.

We can't say, or we shouldn't say, they need to only get a 30% on the regions.

What we do have is saying, essentially, you don't have to get the same scores as your classmates without an IEP.

I'm simply asking if it's the intention of the DOE to say student disabilities, every other kid has to get, you know, at least eight out of 10 on this project, you only have to get a seven or a combination.

Or is the intention to say the standards are the standards because it's project-based learning, there's more time to work on this and the standards are the same with or without an IEP.

What's the intention?

The intention is the latter part of what he said, which is these are the standards.

There are multiple ways of being able to meet that.

For example, if we're thinking about career and technical education, if we're going to train somebody to be an electrician, to be a medical assisting, we want to make sure they are meeting the same bar.

And it's incumbent upon us to work with our students, their learning styles, their IEP needs, ensure the proper accommodations are in place.

But the standards absolutely have to be as high as ever.

Thank you for that answer.

I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Narcisse.