NCEO StateLinksAugust, 2008 Next NCEO Teleconference: Practical Strategies for Accommodations Monitoring and Training NCEO’s next Teleconference is set for Monday, September 29 at 2:30 Eastern, 1:30 Central, 12:30 Mountain, 11:30 Pacific—1.5 hours. Watch for your e-mail invitation or e-mail Rachel Quenemoen at quene003@umn.edu for more information. Given that there are many complex issues surrounding assessment accommodations, this teleconference will explore what we have learned since the original CCSSO Accommodations Manual was published in 2005. Some of the biggest challenges for states are related to training and monitoring. Our presenters will discuss recent directions for practice from a federal perspective, identify considerations for updating your state accommodations manual, and suggest approaches for monitoring with implications for training. Presenters: GSEG Highlights Highlighted here are what two states, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, are doing in their General Supervision Enhancement Grant (GSEG) projects. 2% GSEG Activities: Spotlight on Oklahoma Oklahoma is partnering with SRI to implement its GSEG. The goals are to develop clear and appropriate criteria for IEP teams to apply in identifying which students should be assessed with an Alternate Assessment based on Modified Academic Achievement Standards (AA-MAS), improve Oklahoma’s AA-MAS to be technically sound for peer review, and identify areas of need for the reading assessment to improve accessibility for this population. Surveys were sent to teachers that focused on their perception of the barriers to the AA-MAS reading assessment. Cognitive interviews were held with students who participated in the AA-MAS to identify the barriers they experienced with the reading assessment. Data are currently being analyzed to provide the state with improvement strategies. Oklahoma went through the May peer review held by the United States Department of Education. SRI and expert panelists are reviewing the technical quality of its assessment and identifying any areas in need of improvement before resubmitting for the upcoming peer review. Oklahoma’s future activities include: continuation of personnel and professional development, studies for technical improvement, and analysis of data to make any improvements to the assessments. The Office of Special Education Services, the Office of Accountability and Assessments, and the Office of Standards and Curriculum, all work collaboratively to develop, implement, and improve all assessments in Oklahoma. 2% GSEG Activities: Spotlight on Wisconsin Wisconsin has been learning more about the characteristics of students who may qualify to participate in an AA-MAS. Wisconsin is a member of the Multi-state Consortium Toward a Defensible AA-MAS. See the May 2008 issue of StateLinks for an overview of this GSEG project. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction team (Sandra Berndt, Barb Ebben, Brian Johnson, Eva Kubinski, Carol Schweitzer, and Suzan VanBeaver) organized a study group of 15 educators—including general educators, special educators, a principal, an institution of higher education representative, a special education director, program support teachers, and parents. Participants began by listening to a presentation on the background of AA-MAS both at the state and national levels. Questions were placed on wall posters around the room. The questions were designed to help the meeting participants think about the group of students who might qualify to participate in an AA-MAS. These questions were selected from the NCEO Fact Sheet, Identifying Students with Disabilities who are Eligible to Take an Alternate Assessment Based on Modified Academic Achievement Standards. For a link to the fact sheet go to: http://www.nceo.info/Teleconferences/AAMASteleconferences/AAMASIdentifying Students.pdf. The large group discussed and brainstormed each question. A recorder listed possible answers; participants had no access to the Fact Sheet narrative during this part of the activity. Many broad-based answers were provided. After lunch, participants were given the Fact Sheet which not only offered discussion and possible answers, but also included the regulatory language that supported the discussion. Teams of 3-4 participants compared their previous answers with those explained in the regulatory language to identify differences found both before and after reading the Fact Sheet. Answers were recorded on laptop computers as the participants discussed their comparisons. This comparison led many educators to refine their initially broad perspectives into more specific and detailed answers supported by legal regulations. The participants’ comparisons revealed that they were considering a much larger population than the regulations appear to indicate. They also realized the importance of ensuring student access to content-based instruction in the grade level they are enrolled in before developing an AA-MAS. The participants were able to "discover" new concepts for themselves rather than being "told" how to think about it. If your state might be interested in using a similar process, visit the NCEO Web site later this fall to find the tool that Wisconsin used with its stakeholder group. NCEO Report State Accommodation Policies on ELLs with Disabilities The NCEO report, English Language Learners with Disabilities in State English Language Proficiency Assessments: A Review of State Accommodation Policies (Synthesis Report 66) addresses both participation and accommodation policies for English Language Learners (ELLs) with disabilities on state English language proficiency (ELP) assessments. In the report, 31 states had included information that specifically addressed ELLs with disabilities for state ELP assessments. The report describes state exclusion policies from tests overall and by specific domains, and notes differences in how states base decisions on disability category, severity of disability, etc. It also notes characteristics that states do not allow for making participation decisions and addresses test design issues briefly. The analysis of states’ guidelines identified some promising practices and issues. Some of these were valuing individual student needs in decision making, addressing how to administer ELP assessments across a broad spectrum of characteristics (e.g., new arrival, significant cognitive disabilities, etc.), the potential for offering braille test versions in the future, a state experimenting with novel definitions of accommodations with student created tools, and states acknowledging that determining acceptable accommodations is an ongoing process. Finally, the report encourages states to be certain that their assessments are designed to be valid and reliable for measuring the language development required by Title III in a format accessible to the entire ELL population, with allowable accommodations. |