Grading the Nation's Report Card Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress (1999) / Chapter Skim
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3 Enhancing the Participation and Meaningful Assessment of all Students in NAEP
3 Enhancing the Participation and Meaningful Assessment of all Students in NAEP
Pages 87-113
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From page 87... ...
NAEP and the proposed system of education indicators should include measures that improve understanding of the performance and educational needs of these populations. INTRODUCTION Over the past decade, national concern about and attention to the assessment of students with disabilities and English-language learners has intensified, paralleling the growth in numbers of students with limited English proficiency and 1 The most commonly used term to refer to students who come from language backgrounds other than English and whose English proficiency is not yet developed to the point at which they can profit fully from English-only instruction is limited English proficient (LEP)
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From page 88... ...
The 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) include provisions intended to increase the participation of students with disabilities in state- and district-wide assessment programs, with appropriate accommodations when necessary.
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From page 89... ...
Between 1977 and 1995, the number of students with disabilities increased by 47 percent and the total public school population decreased by 2 percent. During that same period, the percentage of children with specific learning disabilities increased from 1.8 to 5.7 percent of the total public K-12 enrollment, and those with speech and language impairments and mental retardation decreased slightly (Olson and Goldstein, 1997:154~.
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From page 90... ...
Schools with 20 percent or more minority students and 20 percent or more students receiving free or reduced-price lunches are also more likely to enroll larger proportions of English-language learners. A total of 42 percent of all public school teachers have at least one English-language learner in their classes; 7 percent of these teachers have classes in which over 50 percent of their students are identified as English-language learners (Olson and Goldstein, 1997~.
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From page 91... ...
A number of interested offices within the U.S. Department of Education have strongly supported emerging efforts to increase the representation of these groups of students in NAEP and other large-scale assessments, including the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the Office of Civil Rights, the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the Office of the General Counsel, and the National Center for Education Statistics.
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From page 92... ...
report, The Inclusion of Students with Disabilities and Limited English Proficient Students in Large-Scale Assessments: A Summary of Recent Progress (Olson and Goldstein, 1997~. REVIEW OF PROGRESS THROUGH 1996 Prior to 1995, NAEP was administered in classroom-sized sessions as a timed assessment, exclusively in English, and without testing accommodations or adaptations.
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From page 93... ...
Reports on data from the Association of State Assessment Programs. Thirtyseven states reported using special testing accommodations.
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From page 94... ...
Examines exclusion and assessability of students in 1994 trial state assessment in reading. Findings suggested that 83 percent of fourth grade students with individualized education programs would have been assessable on the NAEP reading instrument based on their reading scores.
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From page 95... ...
These are summarized below; it is clear that these efforts have contributed much important information, but they have raised important questions as well (for a more detailed description of these efforts, see Olson and Goldstein, 1997~. The Puerto Rico Special Assessment In 1994 a special project was carried out involving the development of a Spanish-language mathematics assessment instrument for use in Puerto Rico (the Puerto Rico Assessment of Educational Progress PRAEP)
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From page 96... ...
The Feasibility of Collecting Comparable National Statistics about Students with Limited English Proficiency (Cheung et al., 1994) Issues in the Development of SpanishLanguage Versions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Secada, 1994)
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From page 97... ...
the NAEP State Trial Assessment (Hakuta and Valdes, 1997) Conference 1994 NCES Conference on Inclusion Guidelines and Accommodations for Limited English Proficient Students Studies and Projects 1997 The Impact of the Linguistic Features of the NAEP Test Items on Student's Performance in NAEP Assessments (Abed)
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From page 98... ...
Involves consortium of 20 states with CCSSO coordinating work on inclusion of English-language learners in state assessments. SCASS Consortium on Technical Guidelines for Performance Assessment sponsors research projects r focusing on common Issues.
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From page 99... ...
A number of these accommodations were offered simultaneously, for example, students assessed in bilingual sessions using Spanish-English bilingual assessment booklets could also be given extra time. The results of the field test involving both a study of English-language learners and a study of students with disabilities who had individual education plans (IEPs)
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From page 100... ...
for less than two years, AND Judged to be incapable of taking part in the assessment. Student has received academic instruction primarily in English for at least three years, OR Student has received academic instruction in English for less than three years, if school staff determine that the student is capable of participating in the assessment in English, OR Student, whose native language is Spanish, has received academic instruction in English for less than three years, if school staff determine that the student is capable of participating in the assessment in Spanish (if available)
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From page 101... ...
Second, the availability of accommodations to students who previously would have participated in NAEP without them may have unknown impacts on their achievement. The 1996 NAEP Assessment Despite outstanding questions regarding the impact on constructs measured under alternative assessment conditions for English-language learners and students with disabilities, NAEP appropriately decided to move ahead with the new
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From page 102... ...
However, the encouraging results presented here do appear to be laying a foundation for the operational use of accommodations and the accompanying enhanced participation of students with disabilities and English-language learners in future NAEP assessments. PROBLEM OF CONSISTENT AND ACCURATE IDENTIFICATION NAEP's efforts to date make clear that implementing enhanced inclusion and accommodation strategies for English-language learners and students with
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103 ·_4 a' o o .~ a' ·_4 so a' a' a' be · _4 Cq be O o C)
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From page 104... ...
, 78 percent of children ages 6 to 11 who are classified as disabled in schools are so classified because of mild learning disabilities and speech and language disorders; such disabilities are the most difficult to diagnose accurately and consistently. For NAEP, the impact of this lack of uniformity is of particular concern when considering state comparisons, since state-to-state variations in identifying, classifying, and determining appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities are little understood and have unknown impacts on inclusion rates, state comparisons, and summary results.
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From page 105... ...
argue that a number of instruments currently used to assess the language proficiency of English-language learners tend to resemble paper-and-pencil tests administered orally. In spite of certain similarities, however, these instruments are quite different from each other and are based on often contradictory views about the nature of language competence.
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From page 106... ...
When students cannot be included in NAEP's large-scale survey assessments, or when the impact of the accommodation raises serious questions about the validity of combining data for these students with overall NAEP data, then the use of alternative assessment methods should be explored, targeting the assessment method to the particular subgroup of students in question. These assessments would serve as vehicles for gathering information about the achievements of these students and provide a basis for qualitative reports of the results.
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From page 107... ...
An important focus of the integrated system of data collections that we propose in Chapter 1 is the reporting of information on the educational opportunities and instructional experiences of these studentsdesigned to be linked to student achievement data from NAEP's large-scale survey assessments and the alternative assessments we have proposed. Finally, NAEP's goals and plans for the participation, meaningful assessment, and reporting of results of students with disabilities and English-language learners should be clearly defined and broadly disseminated.
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From page 108... ...
For example, although the provision of accommodations appears to increase the participation of students in NAEP, research to date has not resolved whether data obtained using modified versions of assessments or altered administrative conditions have the same meaning (i.e., reflect measurement of the same constructs) as data collected using standard assessment materials and conditions.
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From page 109... ...
We also described a multiple-methods component of NAEP, and the discussion in this chapter outlines another purpose for such a component. NAEP should implement a variety of appropriate alternative assessment methods that capture the achievements of students with disabilities and English-language learners who cannot be included in the large-scale surveys (or whatever other methods are used to assess the general student population)
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From page 110... ...
For example, the NAEP reading assessment may place very different demands on the language abilities of students than does the mathematics assessment. Research on accommodations must also include attention to how different groups of students respond to different kinds of accommodations (e.g., students with language and speech disorders versus students with specific learning disabilities, or recently arrived English-language learners versus those who have received instruction in English over several years)
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From page 111... ...
· Alternative assessment methods for describing the achievements of students with disabilities and English-language learners who cannot participate in NAEP's assessments of the general student population. To date, the focus of research efforts has been on strategies for including English-language learners and students with disabilities in large-scale survey assessments.
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From page 112... ...
. Equivalency of these two sets of results would indicate that the enhanced inclusion has no significant impact on overall NAEP scale score results and that trend lines could be continued with results from assessments administered with the new inclusion criteria and accommodations.
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From page 113... ...
Recommendation 3D. In order to accomplish the committee's recommendations, the NAEP program should investigate the follow~ng: · Methods for appropriately assessing, providing accommodations, and reporting on the achievements of students with disabilities and English-language learners, and · Effects of changes in inclusion criteria and accommodations on trends in achievement results.
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