NCEO
Projects
NCEO has participated in a number of assessment
projects and research studies that collect data on the participation and
performance of students with disabilities, as well as English language
learners, and assess accommodations and alternate assessment approaches that
facilitate the participation of all students in statewide assessment
programs.
The following are some of the current and most recent
of these projects:
IEP/LEP
Large-Scale Assessment Project
LEP/IEP Instruction Project
LEP/IEP Strategies Project
LEP Parents Project
National Alternate Assessment Center (NAAC)
New Hampshire Enhanced Assessment Initiative
Georgia Enhanced Assessment Grant
Partnership for Accessible Reading Assessment
Universal Design Project
IEP/LEP
Large-Scale Assessment Project
This three-year project, funded by the Office of Special Education and
Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), is designed to better understand the
performance and participation of students with disabilities and limited
English proficiency (LEP) in large-scale assessments nationwide. After
completing a comprehensive policy review of all 50 states’ large-scale
assessment policies written for LEP students with disabilities, research
activities will focus on understanding and analyzing states’ large-scale
assessment data collected and reported for these students. A thorough review
of the literature is also underway that will synthesize “the best of what is
known” about including LEP students with disabilities in large-scale
assessment programs.
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LEP/IEP
Instruction Project
The goal of this project, funded by the Office of Special Education
Programs, is to investigate ways that limited English proficient (LEP)
students with disabilities can participate meaningfully in, and benefit
from, grade-level, standards-based instruction. The results of this project
will fulfill the basic needs in promoting effective practice for successful
participation of students with disabilities who are English language
learners (ELLs) by improving the alignment of instructional interventions
for these students with the standards-based curriculum. Data will be
collected on the participation and performance of ELLs with disabilities in
Minnesota’s statewide assessments, including the Test of Emerging Academic
English (TEAE), which was designed to show growth in academic English that
is needed for standards-based instruction and assessment. Data on
recommended strategies for delivering grade-level, standards-based
instruction to LEP students with disabilities will be collected from
teachers as well as students and their parents, and then classroom
interventions will be designed based on these recommendations. A nationwide
sample of teachers will comment on the feasibility and desirability of the
recommended teaching strategies.
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LEP/IEP Strategies Project
The primary goal of this project
is to provide research-based knowledge to educators on the topic of
instructional strategies that help middle school ELLs with disabilities
achieve in standards-based content classrooms. Specifically, this project
takes a look at instructional strategy use at the school level and the
knowledge that teachers possess, placed within the context of specific state
standards.
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LEP
Parents Project
Funded by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services,
this project will study the participation of linguistically diverse parents
in making informed large-scale assessment decisions for their children with
disabilities. Three studies will be implemented to:
- Describe the
content of Individualized Education Programs of students with
disabilities and limited English proficiency (LEP),
- Develop
principles that educators to support parents in making appropriate
large-scale assessment decisions for their children, and
- Connect students’
large-scale assessment performance to their parents’ level of
participation in making informed assessment decisions.
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National Alternate
Assessment Center
The National Alternate Assessment Center
(NAAC) is a research center based at the University of Kentucky, in
collaboration with the National Center on Educational Outcomes, the
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, CAST, and state partners
Connecticut, Colorado,
Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire,
New Mexico, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The primary objectives of
the NAAC are:
-
Bring together and build on the current
research base on high quality, technically sound alternate assessments
based on alternate achievement standards and alternate assessments based
on grade-level achievement standards,
-
Provide technical assistance to states
as they endeavor to design or redesign their alternate assessments, and
-
Demonstrate through the center’s
partnerships with states high quality design and administration of
alternate assessments.
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New Hampshire Enhanced Assessment Initiative
The New Hampshire Collaborative
Enhanced Assessment Grant is a consortium of nine states (Connecticut, Colorado, Kansas,
Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and
South Carolina) and four primary organizational partners (National Center on
Educational Outcomes, National Center on Improvement of Educational
Assessment, Inclusive Large Scale Standards and Assessment Center at the
University of Kentucky, and Measured Progress). The project has three
primary goals:
-
Address the immediate practical
challenge each state faces to provide documentation of the technical
adequacy of its alternate assessment, along with developing the
technical assistance processes and products that will ensure all states
get the support they need to document technical adequacy of alternate
assessments after the project ends.
-
Enhance fundamental knowledge of what
the results of good teaching and learning look like for students with
significant disabilities, which in turn will allow educational
researchers, measurement experts, and practitioners to identify the kind
of evidence of standards-based learning that can yield valid and
reliable inferences for accountability and school improvement purposes.
-
Capture lessons learned that will help
define areas for improvement of entire assessment systems. The project
will target areas where technical assistance is needed to document the
technical adequacy of alternate assessments, articulate needs for
further research, and integrate the discoveries of how to evidence the
learning of students with disabilities to a broader population of
students, including possible revisiting of general assessment technical
documentation.
Georgia
Enhanced Assessment Grant
In the context of high expectations for all students and fully
inclusive assessment and accountability systems, our consortium
of States (Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky), university partners,
researchers, and advocates will explore and document effects of
multiple methods of assessments that meet identified student
needs, to ensure all children are able to show what they know in
the grade-level standards-based curriculum, based on appropriate
and high achievement standards. The states will partner in three
separate but related investigations of assessment options to
include every student appropriately in state assessment and
accountability systems. Each of the states will learn from the
others the potential utility of a range of formative and
summative methods of determining what students know and are able
to do, in response to identified student needs, and then we will
share our understanding nationally.
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Partnership for
Accessible Reading Assessment
The Partnership engages in
research on and development of accessible reading assessments that provide a
valid demonstration of reading proficiency for increasingly diverse
populations of students in public schools, and particularly for those
students who have disabilities that affect reading. It is operated by a
consortium consisting of the National Center on Educational Outcomes; the
National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST);
and Westat. This project works in collaboration with the Designing
Accessible Reading Assessment project at ETS through the National Accessible
Reading Assessment Projects. These projects are now based in the Institute
of Education Sciences.
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Universal
Design Project
(Development Techniques for Universally Designed Assessments)
This project funded by the Office of Special Education Programs is
conducting research on elements of universally designed assessments. The
research is being conducted in three parts:
- Protocol analysis
of students with disabilities participating in state assessments,
- Item analysis of
results of a state assessment, and
- Development of a
guide for the development of universally designed assessments.
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