by Andrew Tellijohn

Federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act require schools to demonstrate adequate annual progress from all students, regardless of ability. How to provide that proof for students who often don’t read, aren’t verbal, or who face other hurdles has been a challenge. Educators have struggled for years to find consensus around the progress that should be expected of students with significant cognitive disabilities and how to monitor such progress.

Researchers in the Research Institute on Progress Monitoring (RIPM), housed in the Institute on Community Integration and the Department of Educational Psychology, are developing progress monitoring for such students through a number of different studies. In one, researchers are using laminated cards showing pictures, letters, and numbers to track progress among 14 children with significant cognitive disabilities in Minneapolis schools. Researchers ask the students to pick out a specific figure from a number of choices on each card—for example, the letter “L” from a selection of three symbols. The general outcome measures (GOM) focus on subjects such as reading and math, rather than more functional assessments such as choice-making.

In last year’s pilot study, researchers used the cards with the students throughout the school year, then tested them once and recorded the number of correct answers given in a certain time frame. Such curriculum-based measurement was pioneered by educational psychology professor Stan Deno.

Researchers spent the 2006–07 school year tweaking their process to establish the shortest amount of testing time required to gather useful results. The current study encompasses 15 elementary-school students and 15 secondary-school students in Minneapolis, whom researchers test three times each year. Teri Wallace, principal investigator on the study, who co-directs RIPM with educational psychology professor Christine Espin, plans to continue assessing the same students next year and to expand the number of participants. Funded by a five-year, $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, RIPM will conduct a number of other ongoing studies as well.

The hope is that such monitoring over time will provide teachers with a better idea of whether students with significant cognitive disabilities are learning the material they are being taught, says Wallace.

Results should help teachers find better teaching strategies, ultimately leading their students to more fulfilling lives. “I think it actually respects where those kids are at and gives their teachers and their parents and the students themselves a way of capturing their performance in some academic areas,” Wallace says. “That is exciting. The teachers, you should hear them talk about it. They didn’t think this would be possible, and it’s working.”

“I think it actually respects where those kids are at and gives their teachers and their parents and the students themselves a way of capturing their performance in some academic areas.”
Teri Wallace, director, Research Institute on Progress Monitoring

Observers of the research say the results promise to provide far more standardized assessments of students with significant cognitive disabilities than have been available. It’s been difficult to figure out teaching methods and standards for such students, says Harold Kleinert (M.A. ’74), executive director of the Interdisciplinary Human Development Institute at the University of Kentucky. Wallace’s research could, for the first time, give those teachers a quickly administered, reliable tool for measuring student progress, he says.

Cathy Carr, district program facilitator for the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Developmental Cognitive Disability program, says GOM could provide teachers for the first time with a system-wide pattern for seeing incremental growth in students who have significant cognitive disabilities and could help maximize the students’ learning potential. “[The results will] give us guidance toward what kind of programming is appropriate for them,” she says. “I think when you are with kids every day, sometimes you have to step back to see the growth. When you are with them all the time you don’t see the changes.”

The point of RIPM’s general outcome measures is to show progress among students within an annual time frame, says Wallace. If the assessments are sensitive enough to show real growth, there may be an opportunity to include the measures in state and federal reporting structures.

Ultimately the goal of RIPM’s approach is to help develop an educational system that respects different ways of learning “and provides a way for kids to be included in systems of academic assessment, a way for teachers to use that assessment information to improve their instruction, and ultimately for kids with significant disabilities to achieve at greater levels or to their potential in academic areas,” Wallace says. “Hopefully the system we build will help inform people better.”