The Every Student* Succeeds Act

 *except for those with cognitive disabilities.

Why is it so difficult to provide appropriate instruction to students with cognitive disabilities? Why aren't teachers free to instruct students at their ability levels? Why are students with cognitive disabilities forced to read chapter books, or add fractions, or write five-paragraph essays, at the same time as everyone else who happens to have been born in the same calendar year that they were? And why are only 1% of students with the most severe cognitive disabilities exempted?

Only recently did I stumble upon the law responsible for this. In fact, I'd forgotten (if I ever knew) that there was such a law.

Naturally, it's called the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about its treatment of students with disabilities:

Most students with disabilities will be required to take the same assessments and will be held to the same standards as other students. ESSA allows for only one percent of students, accounting for ten percent of students with disabilities, to be excused from the usual standardized testing. This one percent is reserved for students with severe cognitive disabilities, who will be required to take an alternate assessment instead. This is a smaller percentage of students than under past mandates, mainly because there is not enough staff available to administer the assessments to the students one-on-one.

There you have it. This is not, ultimately, about student learning, but about the logistics of test administration--tests that have taken on a life of their own, at the expense of everything else.