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NCEO Brief: Performance of Special Education Students: Implications for Common State Assessments (#5)A brief -- the fifth in a series for the Race to the Top Assessment Consortia -- presenting information on the performance of special education students, highlighting the range in performance of these students in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Consortia states, as well as the nature of gaps between special education and non-special education students. Changes in the percentage of special education students proficient and above on state tests over time are also provided. This brief provides concluding thoughts about the performance of special education students and suggestions for steps that Consortia and states might take to look at their own data. This is one of a series of NCEO Briefs for the Race to the Top (RTTT) Assessment Consortia that address the opportunities, resources, and challenges facing cross-state collaborative assessment efforts as they include students with disabilities and English language learners.
Published: January 2012- Parent Video Series: Supporting the Learning of Children with Significant Cognitive Disabilities at Home: Helping Your Child with Communication at HomeFormats: Online
This video describes ways that parents with students with disabilities can help support their child’s communication development at home, and provides sources for more information.
Published: November 2020 - Parent Video Series: Supporting the Learning of Children with Significant Cognitive Disabilities at Home: Helping Your Child with Routines at HomeFormats: Online
This video helps support parents of students with disabilities in establishing routines at home, in order to promote better behaviors and communications. It also provides other sources for more information.
Published: November 2020 
NCEO Newsletter: June 2020 issueFormats: OnlineThis newsletter highlights several new resources that address various aspects of distance learning, including a new brief on formative assessment strategies to improve distance learning outcomes for students with disabilities. We also are highlighting resources in the continually growing series on distance learning that is being developed by TIES Center, which is a NCEO affiliated project. This series is focused on instruction and engagement of students with significant cognitive disabilities in a distance learning environment. This issue also includes an article about a new brief on multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) for all students, including students with significant cognitive disabilities, as well as an article about several new interactive Data Analytics which enable users to explore and visualize data about assessment participation and performance. We conclude with two articles about products created by a NCEO affiliated project, the Improving Instruction for English Learners Through Accessibility Decision Making project – a report that presents the findings of a literature review on research on test accommodations for English learners and English learners with disabilities, and information about two new professional development modules on accessibility decision making.
Published: June 2020- Parent Video Series: Supporting the Learning of Children with Significant Cognitive Disabilities at Home: Helping Your Child with the Foundations of Communication at HomeFormats: Online
This video provides parents and siblings of students with disabilities with tips on how they can support the development of communication skills of their child (or sibling) at home, and provides other sources for more information.
Published: November 2020 - Parent Video Series: Supporting the Learning of Children with Significant Cognitive Disabilities at Home: Helping Your Child with Academics at HomeFormats: Online
This video provides parents of students with disabilities, specifically those with the most significant cognitive disabilities, with tips on how to support their child’s standards-based instruction at home.
Published: November 2020 - Understanding English Learner Accommodations : Electronic TranslatorsFormats: Free Video
The video describes one of the testing accommodations allowed for English learners on West Virginia state assessments. It describes the West Virginia policy on using an electronic translator as an English-language support. The video is part of a series called “Understanding English learner accommodations,” a set of resources created for the West Virginia Department of Education.
Published: 11/3/2022 - Understanding English Learner Accommodations : Translated Test DirectionsFormats: Free Video
The video describes one of the testing accommodations allowed for English learners on West Virginia state assessments. It describes the West Virginia policy on using translated test directions as an English-language support. The video is part of a series called “Understanding English learner accommodations,” a set of resources created for the West Virginia Department of Education.
Published: 11/3/2022 - Understanding English Learner Accommodations : Bilingual Word to Word DictionariesFormats: Free Video
The video describes one of the testing accommodations allowed for English learners on West Virginia state assessments. It describes the West Virginia policy on using bilingual word to word dictionaries as English-language supports. The video is part of a series called “Understanding English learner accommodations,” a set of resources created for the West Virginia Department of Education.
Published: 11/3/2022 - CCSSO Accessibility Manual: How To Select, Administer, And Evaluate Use Of Accessibility Supports For Instruction And Assessment Of All StudentsFormats: Word
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Accessibility Manual: How to Select, Administer, and Evaluate Use of Accessibility Supports for Instruction and Assessment of All Students establishes guidelines for states to use for the selection, administration, and evaluation of accessibility supports for instruction and assessment of all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, English learners with disabilities, and students without an identified disability or English learner status. This resource serves state education agency (SEA) leaders in several ways, and it can be used as a customizable base for or extension of education-accessibility manuals.
Published: May 2021 
Moving Your Numbers: District Self-Assessment Guide for Moving Our Numbers: Using Assessment and Accountability to Increase Performance for Students with Disabilities as Part of District-Wide ImprovementFormats: PDFA guide for use by district leadership teams and school-level leadership teams in gauging the district's degree of implementation and scale of actions associated with effective practices identified in the Moving Your Numbers series.
Published: 2012
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Math Strategy Instruction for Students with Disabilities who are Learning English (#16)This year 2006 report describes a series of single-subject studies examining the effect of a teacher-directed "think aloud" instructional strategy in math with English learners with disabilities.
Published: November 2006
NCEO Brief: Developing Common Accommodations Policies Discussion Points for Consortia (#2)A brief -- the second in a series for the Race to the Top Assessment Consortia -- addressing the need for the Consortia to develop shared accommodations policies. The publication presents information that shows the variability in use of accommodations and policies across the states within each Consortium. The brief identifies ways to address the different perspectives on accommodations that underlie this variability, and provides several questions for the Consortia to use as discussion points as they develop their common accommodations policies.
Published: May 2011
NCEO Newsletter: October 2019 issueFormats: OnlineThis newsletter includes articles on a variety of topics. First, a Brief on examining disproportionality is highlighted, including ideas for looking at data when sample sizes are small; this brief also provides a link to a video on producing confidence intervals. Following that is an article highlighting a study of guidance manuals; it describes ideas and lessons learned from leaders who developed state education agency and local education agency guidance manuals for identifying, assessing, and referring English learners (ELs) to special education. Presentations that will be made by NCEO staff in November in St Paul, Minnesota (MELEd) and February in Portland Oregon (CEC) are also listed in this newsletter. Finally information on products from two NCEO affiliated projects is presented – first, several products from the TIES Center are shown, followed by a description of a module that is now publicly available from the DIAMOND project.
Published: October 2019
NCEO Synthesis Reports: Dealing with Flexibility in Assessments for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities (#60)This year 2006 report presents an analysis of where flexibility is allowed or controlled (standardized) in the development of alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The authors identify key challenges in evaluating data and technical quality given the flexibility of this population's instructional goals. Further, they address specific points for policymakers and assessment leaders to consider regarding the degree of flexibility or standardization they might design into these alternate assessment systems, including clarifying state values and goals, research and development, assessment format, and evaluating technical quality.
Published: June 2006
NCEO Brief: Participation Guidelines for New Assessments: Thinking Through Their Development (#3)A brief -- the third in a series for the Race to the Top Assessment Consortia -- addressing the need for the Consortia to develop shared assessment participation criteria for students with disabilities, English language learners (ELLs), and ELLs with disabilities. It presents information that shows the variability in member state assessment participation rates and criteria. This brief also identifies ways to address the perspectives underlying variability in participation rates and the questions that Consortia may need to ask as they develop their common participation criteria.
Published: June 2011
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Use of Chunking and Questioning Aloud to Improve the Reading Comprehension of English Language Learners with Disabilities (#17)This year 2006 report provides details about a series of single-subject research studies examining how chunking and questioning aloud could be used to improve grade-level standards-based reading achievement of English learners with learning disabilities.
Published: December 2006
NCEO Brief: Including Students with Disabilities in Common Non-Summative Assessments (#6)A brief -- the sixth in a series for the Race to the Top Assessment Consortia -- addressing the Consortia's need to develop an inclusive approach to their non-summative assessments, including their optional interim assessments. Consideration should be given to: (a) the implementation of universal design principles; (b) the development of clear participation criteria and guidelines; and (c) accommodation policies that account for good testing practices, embedded features of technology-based assessments, and additional accommodations. This brief encourages the Consortia to build on what has been learned from inclusive large-scale assessments.
Published: July 2012
NCEO Brief: Understanding Subgroups in Common State Assessments: Special Education Students and ELLs (#4)A brief -- the fourth in a series for the Race to the Top Assessment Consortia -- presenting information on the characteristics of special education students, English Language Learners (ELLs), and ELLs with disabilities. It highlights the variability in these populations, variability that is multiplied when states are grouped in the Consortia. The brief provides several recommendations for the Consortia to help ensure that they understand the characteristics and variability that exist in their member states. These characteristics and variability should influence their assessment design choices, which in turn will support the validity of the assessment system for all subgroups.
Published: July 2011
NCEO Brief: Don't Forget Accommodations! Five Questions To Ask When Moving to Technology-based Assessments (#1)A brief -- the first in a series for the Race to the Top Assessment Consortia -- addressing the need to think carefully about accommodations when moving from paper-based assessments to technology-based assessments. It highlights questions to ask and introduces topics needing clarification by the Consortia. Among the topics are determining which embedded features are available and to whom, which embedded features are to be called accommodations, and which accommodations are still needed that cannot be embedded.
Published: April 2011