Teleconference 5: January 27, 2003

FEDERALLY REQUIRED ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: SAME-OLD, SAME-OLD WON’T CUT IT.

In attempting to summarize what I regard as the most salient implication of the assessment requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act for children with disabilities, I recently came up with the following six-point analysis:

1. Federal law now requires that essentially all American children, including those with disabilities, must complete identical state-administered standardized tests (sometimes with disability-specific accommodations) in seven grade levels.

2. Irrespective of whether one regards such uniform testing as educationally desirable, it is now a federal requirement.

3. As is often the case with federal or state education-related laws, such statutes should be implemented in a manner that is most educationally beneficial to the children affected by those laws.

4. In order for a standardized test to be educationally beneficial, it must possess two assessment attributes, namely, it must (a) describe with clarity the skills and/or knowledge it assesses and (b) provide results in a form so that teachers can identify which parts of their test-related instruction were effective or ineffective.

5. These two assessment attributes cannot be satisfied by standardized tests that are (a) traditionally constructed to permit norm-referenced interpretations or (b) customized to provide standards-based interpretations about students’ mastery of enormous numbers of curricular outcomes.

6. Thus, to optimize the educational benefits for all children who must complete the new federally required achievement tests, including those children with disabilities, statewide standardized achievement tests intended to satisfy the new federal requirements must attempt to assess only a small number of extremely significant content standards

I believe this analysis requires educators to recognize that the kinds of tests they “grew up with” will not satisfy the new federal testing requirements in a way so as to benefit children, including those with disabilities. I hope that you agree with me. If so, you should familiarize yourself with the nine requirements of the Commission on Instructionally Supportive Assessment that call for a new genre of accountability tests.

W. James Popham
January 6, 2003