Link archives

Fall 2000

Special education in an era of accountability

Students with developmental disabilities have been a part of general education classrooms for almost two decades. While educators sometimes may disagree about the most effective methods for providing “special ed,” few would argue against the concept of mainstreaming.

But what are the implications of bringing kids with special needs into the mainstream during a time when students are required, through high-stakes testing, to demonstrate their mastery of basic education skills in reading, math, and writing?

In September the college brought together a group of teachers, administrators, researchers, and professors who all are involved in special education to talk about these questions and others. They were:

• Mark Davison, educational psychology professor and director of the college’s Office of Educational Accountability.
• Stan Deno, educational psychology professor, who developed curriculum-based measurement (CBM), designed to give special education teachers a reliable, quick, and easily-administered test to measure their students’ academic progress.
• Karen Ericksen (B.A. ’73, elementary education; M.A. ’82, educational psychology), principal at Shingle Creek Elementary School, Minneapolis, and former special education teacher.
• Pam Getz, special education teacher on leave to work with the Minneapolis district’s Teacher Instructional Services.
• Rachael Quenemoen, research fellow in the college’s National Center on Educational Outcomes and the parent of an adult daughter with Down syndrome.
• Jane Stevenson (M.Ed. ’00, teacher leadership), a special education teacher at South High School, Minneapolis.
• Karen Sundeen (B.S. ’67, special education; M.Ed. ’92, special education), a special education teacher at Sullivan Elementary School, Minneapolis.

. . .

High-stakes testing is a term referring to district- or state-wide tests that students typically must pass to move on to the next grade or to graduate from high school. In Minnesota, students must now pass the Basic Standards test to be granted a high school diploma. This requirement is independent of grades or any other measurements of academic achievement. They take the test in eighth grade and if they don’t pass, they may retake it several times before graduation. A writing component is being added this year during the sophomore year in high school. Special education students, with their education planning team, may choose not to take the Basic Standards Test, but they must meet the goals of their Individual Education Plan (IEP). The majority of special education students in Minnesota are choosing to take the test.

Davison: I think high-stakes testing in Minnesota was implemented with two ideas in mind. One was to try to make sure we had a uniform minimum quality of education across the state. The other was a decision to focus on those skills believed to be the ones students would use most frequently when they were adults—math, reading, and writing.

We see several impacts of the Basic Standards test for kids with special needs. One is the trouble they may have in passing the test. Our figures show that one-quarter to one-third of kids classified as special education students pass the test the first time they take it. Our most recent figures available seem to indicate that at the end of eleventh grade something like half of the special ed kids have passed.

Second, we are monitoring test participation rates of kids in special education because that has a definite impact on their educational experience. It changes how they are taught because teachers spend a larger proportion of school time helping the kids prepare for the test. Participation rates for special ed students is quite high in Minnesota compared to some states. With the Basic Standards test, it’s around 90 percent.

Quenemoen: Our research in NCEO shows that participation rates in high-stakes testing across the country vary from as low as 15 percent to 99.9 percent. But when you consider that federal guidelines require schools to ensure 100 percent participation (under the Americans with Disabilities Act), anything below that indicates progress needs to be made.

All kids need the opportunity to match themselves against high standards and we’re going to require schools to change how they’re instructing kids when those kids can’t meet the standards. This is for kids with or without disabilities.

The reality is that kids with disabilities have been excluded for so long because of some attitudes and beliefs about what they can and cannot do or accomplish. We’re hoping that by including them in assessments such as high-standards testing that we will increase their access and opportunity to learn everything they’re able to learn.

Getz: As special education teachers we’ve sometimes had a difficult time convincing our classroom teachers that it is important for every kid to participate in testing—I’m thinking now of the tests at the third-grade and fifth-grade levels. But the tests at the elementary school level are our predictors for later issues so it’s very important that all these kids are tested.

Stevenson: The era of accountability is creating some challenges but I think it’s bringing about a shift among regular education teachers that is good. There’s so much more of an atmosphere of accountability that was lacking before we started basic-skills testing. To be honest, when I first heard the Basic Standards test was going to be implemented, I said, “Oh no.” But now, and I’m talking specifically about the Basic Standards, I am downright thankful. I’ve seen kids become more accountable, I’ve seen teachers and administrators be more accountable to students with and without special needs. It has been one of those things that has really helped us to make some very concrete decisions about how to funnel our resources, what to focus on in our interaction with parents and students, specific curriculum decisions. I think really good things have come of it.

Quenemoen: Do you think this is equally true for all kids? Have you seen the same impact with all kids?

Stevenson: Unless you’re talking about really, really challenged kids, yeah. Six years ago it would have been okay for these kids to leave high school at a fourth- or fifth-grade level, or spend their last two years of high school doing primarily vocational kinds of things. Now they’re in reading class and they’re in basic standards math classes. Our view now is that we have four years in high school and we’re going to pack in every moment of instruction we can.

Getz: Another striking effect that I’ve seen is that general education teachers are coming to the special education teachers and saying, “Your kids’ scores are higher than my kids’ scores. What are you doing?” So instead of saying immediately that they’re going to refer a child or that a child must be special needs, now they’re saying, “What can I do to help this child? What tools can I use to help this child be a success in my classroom?”

Ericksen: We’re looking more at math this year. At our beginning meeting this fall with my staff we decided our goal is to truly use the data from testing to make decisions about what we can do to help our students improve. We have only at this point begun to administer the computational portion of our math testing and one of my special education teachers came to me this afternoon and said one of the second-grade teachers was really concerned with the scores. And the immediate response was: “What can we do? What strategies can we use to get our kids up to speed?”

Deno: It sounds like an example where high-stakes testing is clearly working its way down and having a positive effect.

Stevenson: The impact of the Basic Standards test is trickling up as well. For example, this year tenth-graders will be taking the writing test and we’ll only have two years to help them pass before graduation. But now that we have the third- and fifth-grade writing tests, that allows us to begin much earlier to monitor progress, extrapolate which children are on the failure track, and intervene much earlier.

Deno: There seems to be a fair amount of evidence that you can take kids who are not doing well, who are not at the bottom end of your achievement distribution but sort of close to the bottom, and you can use remedial programs and boost their performance considerably. But I’m still wondering whether that kind of intensification of effort with the lowest achieving kids would have an effect similar to what’s being achieved with kids whose failures might be more related to curriculum or instructional failure.

Quenemoen: I’m going to speak here more as a parent of a daughter who was in special ed. I think the high-stakes testing is about raising the bar for all kids. Now that doesn’t mean that my daughter should be expected to achieve the top standards. We’re going to set the bar at a different level for her and it is cause for celebration when she gets there. I celebrate that she was in there struggling through that test because it is a reminder to everybody in the school that that kid is shooting toward those standards. At any point to say, “Let’s not think about the standards for this kid.” That is really selling them down the river.

Davison: Increasing proportions of kids with disabilities are passing the Basic Standards test. They not only are participating, they’re passing. The gap is closing. They’re not catching up to the other kids, but their pass rates are gaining percentage-wise as much as the other kids.

But it makes me wonder if the testing itself and the fact that kids are being held accountable and teachers are being held accountable means that for kids in special education we’re spending more time in focused practice directly related to the test. If that’s happening, does it in some way then diminish their participation in other aspects of the curriculum that might be equally enhancing and fulfilling for them?

Getz: I was the reading specialist in my building and when we adopted the practice of taking kids out of class for 90 minutes of reading the second grade teacher asked me when she was supposed to teach science and social studies. My answer was, “when they can read.” Now whether that was the right response I don’t know. I think if we really do the things we need to do for kids in kindergarten and first and second grade they will have a wonder about science and social studies and history after they gain their basic skills. It will be there for them.

Deno: People who work with fairly severely disabled kids press for inclusion in the classroom without pullouts and separation. They don’t think those kids are necessarily going to learn to read, write, and spell, but there are other aspects to being in the classroom that parents value. But people who work with kids who have mild disabilities who might pass the Basic Standards test see that sometimes being pulled out of that regular classroom might be advantageous because it will help that student achieve at least the basic skills goal that’s been established. There’s a sort of odd contradiction between what parents and advocates for severe disabilities seem to want and what parents and advocates for children with mild disabilities seem to want.

Quenemoen: I am not a blind adherent to inclusion. I never have been as a parent or a professional because the primary thing is to educate these kids. But I would also be reluctant to have the consequences of focusing on standards be that kids must be pulled out to work only with specialists. I’m going to be working to make sure that regular education classrooms answer these needs because these kids should be there.

The stakes are very high and making sure we’re holding students in schools accountable by measures that truly allow them to fairly show what they know and are able to do is important. I’m glad we’re sitting here talking about Minnesota right now in terms of high stakes for kids with disabilities.

—Peggy Rader

Two centers that test the testing

Two centers in the college, the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and the Office of Educational Accountability (OEA), work to gather, analyze, and report on testing in K-12 school systems. NCEO’s work is national in scope and focuses on inclusion of students with disabilities. OEA focuses on overall testing and assessment in Minnesota, including but not focusing on data concerning students with disabilities.

Since its establishment in 1990, NCEO has worked with states and federal agencies to identify important educational outcomes for students with disabilities, examine the participation and use of accommodations by students with disabilities in national and state academic testing, evaluate national and state reporting of test results for students with disabilities, and the availability and use of those reports.

NCEO disseminates reports and other information to states, policy groups, researchers, and agencies. Its staff also helps states to implement testing and accountability systems that include students with disabilities.

OEA was formed at the request of the Minnesota state legislature in 1998 to track, analyze, and report on various test results and other data from school districts throughout the state. The goal is to monitor, measure, and interpret educational outcomes and use those results to direct educational policy in ways that steadily improve those outcomes.

Test results provide a major focus for OEA’s work, but the center also gathers many other indicators: data on teacher and student characteristics, finances and budgeting, curriculum, class size, and other factors that can indicate effective education such as graduation rates, suspension rates, and similar measurements.