New assessments show real progress

General outcome measures track learning among those with significant cognitive disabilities

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 regarding 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 student 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 in the College of Education and Human Development by educational psychology professor Stan Deno.

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 Teri Wallace, principal investigator on the study, who co-directs RIPM with educational psychology professor Christine Espin.

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.”

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. Wallace 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.

What others say about this research

Observers of the research say the results promise to provide far more standardized assessments of students with significant cognitive disabilities than have been available. In the past, teachers have had to largely construct their own measurement tools, says Kristen McMaster, assistant professor and a lead researcher for RIPM who is not directly involved in this study. “There aren’t really a lot of tools for teachers to do that,” she says. “There’s not a lot out there for them to work with that are established and well researched.”

It’s been difficult to figure out teaching methods and standards for those with severe disabilities, says Harold Kleinert, 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 the progress in such children, he says.

“Nobody in the field of special education has figured it out,” says Kleinert (M.A., ’74). “It’s just a very effective monitoring tool that can be used to adjust instruction and to ensure kids are learning.”

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 sometimes 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.”

Why this research matters

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.”

For more information
Teri Wallace, walla001@umn.edu

— by Andrew Tellijohn

May 2007