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NCEO Synthesis Reports: Putting Alternate Assessments into Practice: What to Measure and Possible Sources of Data (#28)Formats: OnlineThis 1997 report highlights four information-gathering procedures that might be used in alternate assessments. The application of these procedures to collect data in broader outcome areas is also highlighted in the report.
Published: September 1997
NCEO Synthesis Reports: High Stakes Testing for Students: Unanswered Questions and Implications for Students with Disabilities (#26)Formats: OnlineThis 1997 literature review looks at existing research on the effects of high stakes tests on students, with particular attention to students with disabilities. The review focuses on potential effects on the curriculum, students, student learning, attitudes, school climate, and costs, and offers recommendations for future research and for those people who develop, implement, and evaluate large-scale testing programs.
Published: January 1997
NCEO Synthesis Reports: Assessment Guidelines that Maximize the Participation of Students with Disabilities in Large-Scale Assessments: Characteristics and Considerations (#25)Formats: OnlineThis 1996 report provides: (1) An overview of immediate and past practice in participation, accommodation, and reporting of students with disabilities in state and national assessments; (2) Criteria for making decisions around participation, accommodation, and reporting of assessment results for students with disabilities. (3) Examples and nonexamples of criteria markers in existing state guidelines, (4) short list of assessment accommodations in four categories, and (5) A hands-on approach to examining and/or revising state and district guidelines about accountability, large-scale assessments, and students with disabilities.
Published: October 1996- NCEO Reports: Two Pieces of a Puzzle: The 95% Participation Requirement in State Plans and States’ Opt-out Policies (#443)
This report presents the findings of an analysis of states’ Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Consolidated State Plans in regards to the 95% participation requirement. Since state-level assessment opt-out policies may impact participation rates, this report also provides an overview of how states’ policies addressed opt-out.
Published: June 2024 - NCEO Reports: Universal Design and K-12 Academic Assessments: A Scoping Review of the Literature (#442)
This report summarizes an investigation of literature published in 1985-2023 on universal design (UD) of large-scale assessments. State education agencies, K-12 assessment vendors, teacher trainers, and classroom teachers are increasingly applying the principles of UD to the instruction and assessment of students from special populations. In theory, UD ensures that instruction and assessment are created from the beginning to be accessible to the widest population of students possible. Yet, it is unclear how these UD frameworks and their associated principles and elements are being applied, or even which UD framework is used. This obscurity and lack of defined UD principles in the research literature creates obstacles in research replication and in identification of evidence-based practices. This scoping review identifies how the concept of UD has been applied to the broad range of U.S. district and state large-scale academic assessments. We included literature on the application of UD to the broad range of K-12 district and state large-scale academic assessments in the U.S.
Published: February 2024 - TIES Center Briefs: Providing Access to School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities (TIES Center Brief #10)
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based approach used to promote inclusive environments and prevent and decrease challenging behavior for all students. However, many students with significant cognitive disabilities, especially those served in self-contained special education settings, do not always receive access to all three tiers of PBIS. This Brief presents ways to design PBIS systems that are accessible to all students. It describes the importance of including all students in PBIS structures and gives practical strategies to help schools achieve this goal. It ends with the story of a student who benefited from full access to his school’s PBIS system.
Published: 7/7/2022 - Accommodations Toolkit: Magnification: ResearchFormats: Online
This fact sheet on magnification is part of the Accommodations Toolkit published by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO). It summarizes information and research findings on the use of magnification as an accessibility feature or accommodation.
Published: 6/8/2022 - NCEO Reports: The Formative Assessment Practices Landscape for Students with Disabilities: An Analysis of State Definitions and Practices, 2021 (#435)
This report outlines the approaches that state education agencies (SEAs) have taken in defining and using formative assessment practices, including practices to explicitly support students with disabilities. At the state level, there have been efforts to develop or adopt formal definitions of formative assessment practices that guide how these practices are used in instruction. Given the different approaches and definitions that might exist for formative assessment practices, this report aims to describe how states are communicating and supporting these practices with their districts and schools.
Published: May 2022 - NCEO Reports: State Approaches to Monitoring AA-AAAS Participation Decisions (#432)
This report presents the findings of a survey of states that examined the policies, practices, and procedures State Education Agencies (SEAs) used to monitor IEPs for participation decision making in alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). It is imperative that only students with the most significant cognitive disabilities participate in the AA-AAAS because it has short- and long-term implications. The instruction of students taking the AA-AAAS may be reduced in depth, breadth, or complexity, and this may have implications for graduation as well as reduce post-secondary options.
Published: April 2022 - NCEO Reports: A Literature Review on Evidence-Based Literacy Assessment and Instruction Practices for English Learners with Significant Cognitive Disabilities (#422)
This report summarizes a comprehensive investigation of research published between 2000–2018 on evidence-based literacy assessment and instruction practices for English learners with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Our goal is to provide policymakers and educators with actionable findings from the literature.
Published: November 2020 - NCEO Reports: Text-to-Speech Accommodation Policies in 2018-19 (#417)
The purpose of this report is to provide an updated review of state text-to-speech (TTS) policies across general assessments of reading, writing, mathematics, and science. TTS refers to technology that reads aloud digital text. The report provides an analysis of TTS by the support tier in which it is placed (i.e., accommodation, designated feature, or universal feature), by the specific parts of tests for which it is allowed (i.e., directions, passages/stimuli, or questions), and by the population of students who can use it (i.e., students with disabilities, English learners, or students without disabilities who are not English learners). This report also provides recommendations for state TTS policies.
Published: August 2020 
NCEO Reports: State Spotlights: Reducing AA-AAAS State-Level Participation Rates to Meet the 1.0% Threshold, 2016-17 to 2017-18 (#421)This report highlights the work of states in the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) 1% Community of Practice (CoP) that reduced their alternate assessment participation rates from school year 2016-17 to school year 2017-18. Five states volunteered to share information on their approaches to decreasing the state-level participation rate in their states’ alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). The states highlighted in this report are Arkansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. Each state provided information on the strategies that it took; several provided examples of some of the materials they used.
Published: July 2020
Improving Instruction Briefs: Building Successful Communication Between Teacher and Parent or Guardian: Information for TeachersThis Brief for teachers answers questions about communicating with parents or guardians for whom communicating in English is a challenge. Good parent-educator communication is key to determining appropriate accessibility features and accommodations for students. This Brief was developed by NCEO’s “ Improving Instruction for English Learners Through Improved Accessibility Decisions,” in collaboration with the West Virginia Department of Education.
Published: December 2019
NCEO Reports: 2018-19 Participation Guidelines and Definitions for Alternate Assessments based on Alternate Academic Achievement Standards (#415)The purpose of this report is to provide an update on state participation criteria and guidelines for alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). In this report, we analyze criteria for participation, factors identified by states not to use as the basis for decisions, formats of resources provided, and the existence of explicit definitions of students with “significant cognitive disabilities.” Also included are analyses of information covered in state documents about AA-AAAS participation: the type of information provided to parents, the extent to which English learners are addressed, and the inclusion of information about exemptions.
Published: October 2019
Forum on States and Districts Working Together on the 1.0% ThresholdA report on a forum held on June 26, 2019 in Orlando, Florida to discuss how states and districts can work together to meet the 1.0% threshold on participation in the alternate assessment aligned to alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). The forum was a post-session to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA), and was a collaboration of the Assessing Special Education Students (ASES) State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) and the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO). This report summarizes both the introductory information provided to forum participants, and the facilitated forum discussions that followed.
Published: September 2019
NCEO Data Analytics: Percent of ELs with Disabilities from 2013-14 to 2016-17 (#9)Formats: OnlineThis interactive report presents information on the percent of students with disabilities ages 6-17 who are also English learners (ELs), and the proportion of these students by category for school years 2013-14 to 2016-17, for the 50 regular states.
Published: May 2019
NCEO Brief: Suggestions for Aligning Alternate Achievement Standards with WIOA (#16)This Brief provides information on alternate achievement standards and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014, and makes several suggestions about ways to show that a student who meets a state’s alternate academic achievement standards is on track to pursue postsecondary education or competitive integrated employment. Recommendations are also provided for states on how to build a strong system to support the realization of the intent of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and WIOA requirements for their students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.
Published: January 2019
Guidance for Examining District Alternate Assessment Participation RatesThis Brief addresses important questions that arise for states as they implement federal alternate assessments aligned to alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) participation requirements. Federal policy limits the number of students that a state may assess with an AA-AAS to no more than 1% of all students in the grades assessed in a state. The AA-AAS is intended only for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Given that many states report more than 1% of their student population taking an AA-AAS, there is a need to identify effective and technically defensible practices for monitoring participation rates for alternate assessments.
Published: October 2018
NCEO Brief: Using Local Assessment Data to Measure Progress Toward the State-Identified Measurable Result (SIMR) (#14)The purpose of this Brief is to outline key strategies for the collection, analysis, and use of local assessment data to monitor progress toward the (State-Identified Measurable Result)SIMR. It provides information and suggestions for state education agencies and technical assistance providers who work with local education agencies (LEAs). It highlights six strategies, and then identifies several questions that states may want to consider if they choose to use local assessment data to measure progress toward their SIMRs.
Published: February 2018
NCEO Reports: Alternate Assessments for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities: Participation Guidelines and Definitions (#406)This report documents the status of states' assessment participation guidelines and definitions of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities that were in place just prior to the start of the 2017-18 school year. With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 2015, renewed attention was paid to the importance of guidelines for participation in alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) and to understanding of who the students are who have significant cognitive disabilities. The analysis includes the factors that states indicated should and should not be considered when making decisions about participation in the AA-AAS. It also documents the format of the guidelines that states made available to decision makers. Finally, it examines the extent to which states provided an explicit definition of "students with the most significant cognitive disabilities."
Published: December 2017