NCEO StateLinks

"Low assessment scores for students with disabilities—is it a problem with the assessment or is it a problem with instruction? And what can a state do about it?"  
These engaging questions are the topic of NCEO’s next Teleconference.

The Teleconference will take place Tuesday December 18, 2007, 2:30 p.m. ET, 1.5 hours duration. It will be co-hosted by Rachel Quenemoen, NCEO, and Eileen Ahearn, NASDSE.

NCLB-required assessment and accountability systems are triggering efforts in school districts to ensure that all students are effectively being taught their enrolled-grade content. Two district-level leaders in curriculum and in special education will address how they used assessment results to learn where the gaps are, looking at assessment practices as well as practices in instruction and access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities. Their efforts to fill these gaps have led to improved accountability status for their schools.

Both of these districts—a large, urban Texas district, and a smaller rural California one—are systematically working with their staff using assessment and instructional data to make instructional decisions and to improve student outcomes.

They will address:

• Special and general education structural shifts that foster improved outcomes for schools and students with disabilities.

• Use of data by interdisciplinary planning teams to compact and accelerate learning for these students.

• The role of district assessment and special education leadership, intermediate service agencies, and state offices of assessment and special education in supporting this important work.

California’s state directors of assessment and special education will serve as discussants, followed by Federal partner comments and an open discussion, and Q and A among participants.

Presenters: Jim Canter, Assistant Superintendent, Curriculum, Snowline Joint Unified School District, Phelan, CA; and Judith Higgins Moening, Executive Director, Special Education, North East Independent School District, San Antonio, TX.

Discussants: Deb Sigman, Director of Standards and Assessment Division, California Department of Education; and Mary Hudler, Director of Special Education Division, California Department of Education.

Many projects relevant to the assessment of students with disabilities are now underway, thanks to federal funding. Brief summaries of some of these are available at the "Projects" link on NCEO’s home page (www.nceo.info). Currently, Abstracts for the General Supervision Enhancement Grants (GSEGs) awarded in 2006 and 2007 are posted. The GSEGs are designed to improve the capacity of states to accurately report on the performance and participation of children with disabilities on the states’ assessments. Summaries for the funded Enhanced Assessment Grants (EAGs) will be added soon.

The summaries of the GSEG projects provide quick information on the individual and collaborative work being conducted by states. They are organized by (1) projects that address alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards, and (2) alternate assessments based on modified achievement standards.

There are eight summaries for projects focusing on alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards, and fifteen summaries for projects focusing on alternate assessments based on modified achievement standards.

The new parent guide, Learning Opportunities for Your Child Through Alternate Assessments: Alternate Assessments Based on Modified Academic Achievement Standards walks parents of children who receive special education services though an assessment option that may be made available to some students. Alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAS) is an assessment option that some states may use to evaluate the performance of a small group of students with disabilities. This guide is also an excellent resource for school administrators, teachers, and others who want an overview of the AA-MAS.

Topics covered include: improving academic achievement through school accountability, creating flexible assessment options for special education students, understanding modified academic achievement standards, making evidence-based decisions for your child, and linking instruction and assessment to state academic content standards. See http://www.nceo.info/OnlinePubs/AAMASParentGuide.pdf.

A new NCEO report, A Summary of the Research on the Effects of Test Accommodations: 2005-2006 (Technical Report 47), summarizes test accommodations research published from 2005-2006. Written for NCEO by April Zenisky and Steve Sireci, the report covers 32 published research studies. It identifies promising directions in research and provides suggestions for future studies. Some of the highlighted points made in the report are:

• Researchers conducted primary data collection in over 70% of the studies, rather than using existing data sets.

• The most commonly studied accommodations were extended time, oral accommodations (e.g., read aloud), and computerized administration.

• Most oral presentation and timing accommodations empirically tested had a positive effect on scores.

• Testing accommodations noted on a student’s IEP do not always match those provided or used in instruction.

• Almost half of the studies employed experimental or quasi-
  experimental designs.

Some promising trends observed were the span of ages being included in the accommodations studies (from elementary to adult education) and a focus on testing contexts. Areas that could be strengthened in future research are increasing the racial/ethnic diversity of participants in the studies, and the construction of true scientific experiments looking at the effects of accommodations on scores for students with and without disabilities. See http://www .nceo.info/OnlinePubs/Tech47/.

A new NCEO report, Student Think Aloud Reflections on Comprehensible and Readable Assessment Items: Perspectives on What Does and Does Not Make an Item Readable (Technical Report 48), highlights the use of a think aloud protocol with students who had learning disabilities in reading. The purpose of the study was to better understand how changes made to improve the readability of test passages might affect student performance on corresponding items. Released NAEP items were used as the standard items, and then modified items were created using the definition of readable and accessible items. This study is preliminary, due to the small sample size, yet it provided an indication that students tended to achieve better on the changed items. Specific characteristics of items that created difficulty for students are identified in the report. See http://www.nceo.info/OnlinePubs/Tech48/.

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