No Child credited for special-needs student gains

 As Montgomery County, Maryland, 9th-grader Stephen Sabia reads “Romeo and Juliet” and studies the Holocaust and World War II for honors history and English, his mother credits an important ally in her years-long drive to secure the best education possible for her son with Down syndrome: the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The six-year-old law’s requirement to raise student achievement across the board has forced schools to pay attention as never before to special-needs children who too often had been written off as incapable of handling the same lessons as peers in mainstream classrooms. Students with disabilities have made some strides in math and reading on state and national tests in recent years, although experts debate whether the law is responsible. Read more in The Washington Post online.