On his first day without the interim tag, Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll vowed to overhaul the state’s foundering special and bilingual education programs.

Driscoll, who won a monthlong battle to become commissioner, said improving scores in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests and holding districts accountable for their failings are at the top of his to-do list.

“The agenda in March is going to be huge,” said Driscoll, the state’s 22nd education commissioner.

Revamping bilingual education is a controversial issue statewide and nationally.

Driscoll said he wants to use waivers to give local districts, with parental support, the right to implement alternative programs to the mandated transitional bilingual education program.

“We can either try to get a change in the law – which hasn’t been successful – or another approach would be to ask for waivers from the Legislature,” he said.

Last school year, 45,412 Massachusetts students – roughly 5 percent of the total kindergarten through 12th-grade population – were considered as having limited English speaking skills.

An average of 80 percent of the limited-English students leave bilingual programs in three years or less.

On the special education front, Massachusetts has the highest percentage of special education students in the country.

Hundreds of students don’t need to be in special ed, Driscoll said.

“We’re going to be presenting new regulations in special education and we’re going to be doing a study of our standard,” Driscoll said.

Statewide, 16.7 percent of the students in the state are identified as having special needs.

State law requires that those students be provided with the maximum service, as opposed to a free and appropriate standard the rest of the country uses, he said.

“The cost of special education is crowding out other initiatives, and somehow we have to get those costs somewhat under control,” Driscoll said.

“There’s a number of kids who I don’t think need to be serviced under a special needs act.”

Last year, legislation to tie the Bay State standard to other states failed.

“It didn’t pass at the last minute,” he said. “We want to try and see if we can get that through this year.”

Another key issue is implementing the MCAS this spring, Driscoll said. “We want to make sure it gets even smoother over the last year,” he said.

Last May, MCAS tested 208,880 fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders. The scores showed students statewide are having difficulty with basic literacy, math and science across the three grade levels.

Driscoll also vowed to toughen state oversight by implementing a new school and district accountability system for the state’s 350 school districts and 1,800 schools.

The evaluation system will rate schools and districts based on MCAS test scores, dropout and attendance rates.

James Peyser, the new chairman of the Board of Education, said school and district accountability is crucial to improving student achievement.

“I think accountability for performance on the part of schools and school districts is the bedrock of education reform,” Peyser said.



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