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Assessment Principles and Guidelines for ELLs with DisabilitiesA report detailing the work of an Institute project called Improving the Validity of Assessment Results for English Language Learners with Disabilities (IVARED) that has identified essential principles of inclusive and valid assessments for English language learners (ELLs) with disabilities. These principles were developed from a review process with nationally recognized experts in special education, English as a second language or bilingual education, assessment, and accountability. Additional input was obtained through discussion of the principles at national assessment and education conferences, as well as during meetings of the Council of Chief State School Officers State Collaborative on Assessments and Student Standards (SCASS) groups. This report presents five core principles of valid assessments for this population of students, along with a brief rationale and specific guidelines that reflect each principle.
Published: 2013
NCEO Synthesis Reports: Alternate Assessments Based on Alternate Achievement Standards (AA-AAS) Participation Policies (#88)A report focusing on participation policies for alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS). Since 1992, NCEO has analyzed participation and accommodation policies for students with disabilities on state administered assessments, and has developed reports on policies for regular assessments, AA-AAS, and alternate assessments based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS). Publicly available participation guidelines were compiled and analyzed for 58 states and entities (Washington DC, Guam, etc.). In addition to providing a national picture of policies, it presents the results of the policy analysis by each of the four content assessment consortia that have been funded to develop new assessment systems: two that are developing regular assessment systems (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers - PARCC, and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium - SBAC), and two that are developing systems for alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (Dynamic Learning Maps - DLM, and National Center and State Collaborative - NCSC).
Published: December 2012
IVARED WebsiteFormats: OnlineA website presenting the Improving the Validity of Assessment Results for English Language Learners with Disabilities (IVARED) project, which aims to answer three questions:
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Who are English language learners with disabilities?
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How do they learn best?
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How can teachers most effectively support their learning?
Published: 2012-
NCEO Synthesis Reports: 2009 State Policies on Assessment Participation and Accommodations for Students with Disabilities (#83)A report updating information on the state policies on assessment participation and accommodations that NCEO has been tracking and analyzing since 1992. NCEO last reported this information on these policies in 2008 (based on 2007 data). Policies from all 50 states and the District of Columbia are included in the report. In addition, current state accommodations policies were analyzed by grade and content area.
Published: September 2011
NCEO Synthesis Reports: Characteristics of States' Alternate Assessments Based on Modified Academic Achievement Standards in 2010-2011 (#85)A report tracking test design changes between the alternate assessment based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAS) and regular assessment, whether states' AA-MAS were computer-based, whether states with computer-based tests (CBTs) included tutorial and practice test opportunities, and whether states' documents included considerations for English Language Learners (ELLs) with disabilities. Federal regulations introduced AA-MAS as another assessment option for students with disabilities in 2007. Eligible students may be from any disability category, and they must be considered unlikely to achieve grade-level proficiency within the time period covered by their Individualized Education Program (IEP) and have IEP goals based on grade-level content standards. NCEO has been tracking the characteristics of states' AA-MAS since 2007. According to the 2009 NCEO update on test characteristics, 13 states had developed what they considered to be an AA-MAS, and three states (Texas, Kansas, and Louisiana) had received federal approval. The further study reported in this publication found 17 states that by the 2010-11 academic school year had developed, or were developing, what they considered to be an AA-MAS, and one additional state (North Carolina) had received federal approval.
Published: September 2011
NCEO Technical Reports: 2008-09 Publicly Reported Assessment Results for Students with Disabilities and ELLs with Disabilities (#59)A report analyzing the public reporting of assessment data for students with disabilities in K-12 schools in the United States; this is NCEO's 13th annual report on this subject. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) required states to disaggregate performance data at the state and district level. Although reporting practices for regular assessments have changed little for 2008-09 compared to the previous years, this year did mark the first time all 50 states reported disaggregated data for at least some state assessments in ESEA accountability systems. Although there were increased mean gaps between students with disabilities and regular students on regular assessments across all grades and content areas, the mean performance for students in both populations showed improvement in all grades and content areas. However, compared to students with disabilities, regular students showed larger mean gains compared to last year. Public reporting on English language learners (ELLs) with disabilities is also examined in this report.
Published: August 2011
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 State Surveys: 2009 Survey of States - Accomplishments and New Issues at the End of a Decade of ChangeA 2009 report providing a snapshot of the new initiatives, trends, accomplishments, and emerging issues during this important period of standards-based education reform as states document the academic achievement of students with disabilities. It summarizes the 12th survey of states by the Institute's National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO). Results are presented for all 50 states and 8 of the 11 federally-funded entities (unique states).
Published: June 2010
NCEO Technical Reports: State Reports on the Participation and Performance of English Language Learners with Disabilities in 2006-2007 (#54)A report reviewing state reports on the participation and performance of English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities in 2006-2007. Previous data reports suggested that ELLs with disabilities tend to have a lower percentage of students scoring proficient than their English proficient peers on regular assessments. But in 2006-2007, ELLs with disabilities out-performed the total number of students taking alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards. This improvement surprised researchers, leading them to speculate on possible causes. However, not all states reported this data and, even among those that did, the number of students in these data is low, leading the researchers to urge caution in interpreting the practical significance of the differences in performance. On English language proficiency assessments, ELLs with disabilities usually scored lower than ELLs without disabilities on measures of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Published: May 2009
PARA Accessible Reading Assessment Reports: Disabilities and Reading: Understanding the Effects of Disabilities and Their Relationship to Reading Instruction and AssessmentA report providing common ground on the issues surrounding reading and students with various disabilities to facilitate discussion of accessible reading assessment. The information in this report was obtained through a broad review of literature and Web sites of national agencies and organizations, along with input and feedback from professionals in the disability areas. It is not intended to be a comprehensive research review of disabilities or reading-related issues, but nevertheless should prove useful for understanding the effects of disabilities and their relationship to reading. Seven disabilities are discussed in the order of their prevalence: specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, intellectual disabilities, emotional/behavioral disabilities, autism, deaf or hard of hearing, and visual impairments. Although these disabilities do not comprise all of the possible disability categories or even the most common disabilities, they do represent those often considered most challenging for reading assessment. This report provides:
- An overview of the characteristics of students with each disability
- A description of common approaches to reading instruction for students with each disability
- Assessment approaches and issues that surround the assessment of reading for students with each disability.
Published: March 2009
PARA Accessible Reading Assessment Reports: Exploring Factors that Affect the Accessibility of Reading Comprehension Assessments for Students with Disabilities: A Study of Segmented TextA document reporting on a study seeking to experimentally examine factors affecting accessibility of assessments for students with disabilities. This study focused on reading comprehension assessments since (1) reading is one of the primary areas of the NCLB Title I accountability requirements, and (2) reading is the underlying ability for understanding instruction and assessment in all other content areas. A randomized field trial study in which a reading comprehension assessment, designed to be potentially more accessible for students with disabilities, was administered to groups of students including students with disabilities. Three long reading comprehension passages from existing state assessments were broken down into more manageable segments with corresponding questions placed immediately after each segment. The results of the segmenting study indicated that:
- Segmenting did not affect reading performance of students without disabilities, suggesting that it does not compromise the validity of reading assessment
- Segmenting did not affect reading performance of students with disabilities
- The segmented version had a higher reliability for students with disabilities without affecting the reliability for students without disabilities
- No trends were observed for student motivation, general emotions, and moods with respect to segmented assessment in either disability or no disability groups.
Published: January 2009
NCEO State Surveys: 2007 Survey of States - Activities, Changes, and Challenges for Special EducationThis year 2007 report summarizes a state survey given to all states addressing participation rates, use of accommodations, the number of students achieving grade level proficiency, and more.
Published: October 2008
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Delphi Study of Instructional Strategies for English Language Learners with Disabilities: Recommendations from Educators Nationwide (#21)A report from NCEO's national research spanning seven years that has focused on identifying and validating instructional strategies for ELLs with disabilities. In recent work, educators from five states with large ELL populations and five states with small ELL populations generated sets of reading, mathematics, and science instructional strategies and weighted their importance in focus group-like settings using the Multi-Attribute Consensus Building method. The research described here is a confirmatory Delphi study of the strategies identified in an earlier study and is based on polling teachers about strategies identified in the earlier work.
Published: September 2008
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Middle School Principals' Interpretation of State Policy and Guidance on Instructional Strategies for ELLs with Disabilities (#20)A report describing how principals of successful schools translated information to teachers on designing accessible standards-based instruction for ELLs with disabilities. The study aimed to highlight promising practices that might be studied further and to identify areas where principals may need additional support in providing instructional leadership for their teachers.
Published: September 2008
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Middle School Principals' Perspectives on Academic Standards-Based Instruction and Programming for English Language Learners with Disabilities (#22)A report from a study following up on the findings of earlier NCEO research on instructional services and leadership for English language learners (ELLs) with disabilities. This study looked at a group of principals of middle schools making adequate yearly progress with ELLS and students with disabilities, and addressed three issues: (1) services and programs offered for ELLs with disabilities, (2) sources of instructional strategy information specific to ELLs with disabilities, and (3) the principal's role in supporting teachers' use of instructional strategies for ELLs with disabilities.
Published: September 2008
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Reading, Mathematics, and Science Instructional Strategies for English Language Learners with Disabilities - Insights from Educators Nationwide (#19)A report studying instructional strategies at middle and junior high schools. Middle school teaching and learning is especially challenging, perhaps because the curriculum places greater cognitive demands on emerging adolescents at a developmental stage when students, especially those who have already been struggling, can be at higher risk for academic failure. ELLs with disabilities could be at particular risk, given the combination of learning challenges they may encounter in middle school. The study aimed to identify teacher-initiated instructional strategies that are preferred by practitioners who work daily with ELLs with disabilities.
Published: September 2008
NCEO Synthesis Reports: English Language Learners with Disabilities in State English Language Proficiency Assessments: A Review of State Accommodation Policies (#66)Formats: PDFThis year 2007 report documents states' participation and accommodations policies for English learners (ELs) with disabilities on their English Language Proficiency (ELP) assessments for 2005-06. Findings show 31 states addressed accommodations for ELs with disabilities. Of these 31 states, 13 states allowed the exclusion of a student based on his or her disability characteristics for one or more domains of the ELP assessment. Other participation findings show exclusion based on severity of disability, such as for students needing to participate in an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards. Of the accommodation findings, the most controversial accommodation was spellchecker/ assistance /dictionary use. The authors note that continued attention to the participation and performance of ELLs with disabilities in ELP and other state assessments is essential.
Published: December 2007
NCEO English Language Learners (ELLs) with Disabilities Reports: Standards-Based Instructional Strategies for English Language Learners with Disabilities (#18)This year 2007 report describes the extent of information on instructional strategies provided for English learners with disabilities available to educators as a result of a review of state standards and supplementary instructional documents.
Published: February 2007
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 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