NCEO recently conducted three webinars for the U.S Departments of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) on topics related to peer review and students with disabilities.

The first webinar was titled Meeting Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Requirements: Alternate Assessments and Inclusion of All Students (Webinar Slides  / Video). ESSA requires states to demonstrate that students who are proficient on the state’s alternate assessment are on track to meet WIOA requirements for postsecondary education and competitive integrated employment. This webinar featured an NCEO publication: Suggestions for Aligning Alternate Achievement Standards with WIOA.

In the second webinar, How Do We Lower our Alternate Assessment Participation Rate?  Five States Share their Stories (Webinar Slides / Video), education leaders from five states shared their challenges, and highlighted strategies and resources they used to successfully reduce alternate assessment participation rates. Detailed information about the states’ strategies are discussed in a NCEO report: State Spotlights: Reducing AA-AAAS State-Level Participation Rates to Meet the 1.0% Threshold, 2016-17 to 2017-18.

The third webinar, Successfully Making and Implementing Participation and Accommodations Decisions for English Learners with Disabilities (Webinar Slides / Video), provided suggestions and strategies to improve participation decision making for both content assessments and English language proficiency (ELP) assessments. It also highlighted the critical need for appropriate accessibility supports and accommodations for English learners with disabilities, and provided practical suggestions for how to select and implement accessibility features and accommodations for them. This webinar highlighted a NCEO report: Updated Assessment Principles and Guidelines for English Learners with Disabilities.