Welcome

Welcome to the winter NCEO e-newsletter  I was honored to become the new director of NCEO last October when Martha Thurlow stepped down. I am very grateful for the support and encouragement that many of you provided during this transition.

I want to recognize the exceptional leadership that Martha provided NCEO over the years. Under her leadership, NCEO led the way in advocating for appropriate testing access, inclusion, and accommodations for students with disabilities, English learners, and English learners with disabilities. We are very fortunate that Martha will continue to be part of NCEO on a part-time basis in a retirement position.

Prior to assuming my current role, I was the associate director of NCEO. I look forward to building upon NCEO’s incredible history to support the continued growth and development of this forward-thinking organization. This will only be possible because of NCEO’s great staff and partners. Over the years, I’ve been inspired by the passion and energy of the wonderful team at NCEO who are dedicated to improving the instruction and assessment of students with disabilities, English learners, and English learners with disabilities.

In this issue, we highlight several NCEO resources that can be used to learn more about what the research says about the effectiveness of various accommodations. We also highlight several new publications, including a report on states’ alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS) participation guidelines and definitions of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. A brief on considerations for states providing materials in braille is also highlighted, as well as a parent-educator toolkit developed by an affiliated project, the Improving Instruction for English Learners Through Improved Accessibility Decisions project. Finally, in this issue, we provide information on NCEO presentations and posters at the annual conference of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC).

The NCEO team and I love to hear from you. We welcome your ideas and suggestions for newsletter articles as we work to improve the instruction and assessment of all students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and English learners with disabilities.

Sheryl Lazarus, NCEO Director

Accommodations Research Literature: Online Bibliographies and Research Summaries

NCEO has several resources that can be used to learn more about what the research says about the effectiveness of various accommodations. These include online searchable databases, and published summaries of the research on effects of test accommodations that go back to 1999.

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New NCEO Report on AA-AAAS Participation Guidelines and Definitions of Student with Significant Cognitive Disabilities

NCEO has released a report titled 2018-19 Participation Guidelines & Definitions for Alternate Assessments based on Alternate Academic Achievement Standards. This report provides an updated review of 2018-19 state criteria and guidelines for participation of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities in alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS).

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New Brief on Considerations for States Providing Materials in Braille

NCEO recently published, Considerations for States Providing Materials in Braille. This brief provides information on, and recommendations for, providing appropriate braille materials for students.

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Improving Instruction Parent-Educator Toolkit

The parents of English learners need to be involved in decisions about accessibility features for their children. An NCEO affiliated project, Improving Instruction for English Learners Through Improved Accessibility Decisions, recently developed a Parent-Educator Toolkit which contains a set of concise briefs for parents, teachers, and principals.

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NCEO Presentations at Council for Exceptional Children Conference

The Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC) annual conference will be held from February 5 through February 8, 2020, in Portland, Oregon. NCEO staff will be involved in several presentations and posters. We list here the conference presentations and posters by NCEO staff members.

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NCEO’s National Assessment Center is supported through a Cooperative Agreement (#H326G160001) with the Research to Practice Division, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. The Center is affiliated with the Institute on Community Integration at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. The contents of this report were developed under the Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Department of Education, but do not necessarily represent the policy or opinions of the U.S. Department of Education or Office within it. Readers should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Project Officer: David Egnor

Welcome

This 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.

Sheryl Lazarus assumed the directorship of NCEO on October 1, 2019, so this will be the last time I write this “Welcome.”  For the next issue Sheryl will assume the “Welcome” note responsibilities, but I will still be part of NCEO and look forward to continuing to work with many of you as my role shifts.

– Martha Thurlow, NCEO Director

Examining Disproportionality of Student Group Participation in Alternate Assessments

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (NCIEA) jointly published a Brief titled Guidance for Examining Disproportionality of Student Group Participation in Alternate Assessments. The purpose of this brief is to examine disproportionality with respect to student group participation in Alternate Assessments aligned with Alternate Academic Achievement Standards (AA-AAAS). It is a companion to the NCEO brief, Guidance for Examining District Alternate Assessment Participation Rates. This brief provides a more detailed examination and illustration of disproportionality.

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Guidance Manuals for Educators of English Learners with Disabilities: Ideas and Lessons from the Field

NCEO published a report, Guidance Manuals for Educators of English Learners with Disabilities: Ideas and Lessons from the Field (NCEO Report 410), written by Elizabeth Burr (WestEd). This report 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.

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NCEO Presentations at MELEd and Council for Exceptional Children Conferences

NCEO staff will be involved in several presentations and posters at the 2019 MELEd Conference (MinneTESOL and the Minnesota Department of Education) from November 21 to November 23, 2019 in Saint Paul, MN as well as the Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC) annual conference to be held from February 2 through February 8, 2020, in Portland, OR. See the article for the full lists.

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New TIES Center Publications on Inclusive Education for Students with the Most Significant Cognitive Disabilities

NCEO’s affiliated center, TIES Center, which is the national center on inclusive policies and practices for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, has several new publications. See this article for more on Taking the Alternate Assessment Does NOT Mean Education in a Separate Setting! (TIES Center Brief #2), Using Systems Change Efforts to Implement and Sustain Inclusive Education Practices in General Education Settings for Students with the Most Significant Cognitive Disabilities: A Review of the Literature (TIES Center Report #102), and Communication Competence in the Inclusive Setting: A Review of the Literature (TIES Center Report #103).

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DIAMOND Project’s “Making Accessibility Decisions for Everyone” Online Professional Development Course Launches

NCEO’s affiliated project, the Data Informed Accessibility – Making Optimal Needs-based Decisions (DIAMOND) project, has released an online professional development module on accessibility features and accommodations, DIAMOND: Making Accessibility Decisions for Everyone. This professional development module is the culmination of the research work conducted by the DIAMOND project, and is designed to give educators the knowledge and tools they need to make, implement, and evaluate sound decisions about accessibility features for the students in their classrooms.

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NCEO’s National Assessment Center is supported through a Cooperative Agreement (#H326G160001) with the Research to Practice Division, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. The Center is affiliated with the Institute on Community Integration at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. The contents of this report were developed under the Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Department of Education, but do not necessarily represent the policy or opinions of the U.S. Department of Education or Office within it. Readers should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Project Officer: David Egnor

Welcome

NCEO sends its greetings for a wonderful spring and summer. In this issue, we highlight sessions in which NCEO will participate during the upcoming National Conference on Student Assessment in Orlando, Florida. We also highlight recent NCEO reports, including two that address expectations for students with disabilities—one a longer report that examines what we know in the context of policy, practice, and evidence from the implementation of reforms (Students with Disabilities in Educational Policy, Practice, and Professional Judgment: What Should We Expect?); and the second a brief that provides suggestions for policymakers, states, and technical assistance providers (Revising Expectations for Students with Disabilities). A new Data Analytics that provides national and state trends on students with disabilities and their categories of disability also is highlighted. A report that updates state graduation policies for students with disabilities concludes the NCEO reports highlighted in this issue. We conclude this issue by summarizing a new report from the DIAMOND Project, Additional Educators’ Perspectives on Classroom Implementation of Accessibility Features and Accommodations.

– Martha Thurlow, NCEO Director

NCEO at the National Conference on Student Assessment

The 2019 National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA) will be held in Orlando, Florida on June 24-26. NCEO staff members will participate in several sessions. See the article for the full list.

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Expectations for Students with Disabilities

NCEO provides a cross-disciplinary introduction to topics in educational policy, practice, and law that have highlighted critical questions related to expectations for students with disabilities in the report Students with Disabilities in Educational Policy, Practice, and Professional Judgment: What Should We Expect. Also, NCEO published the Brief, Revisiting Expectations for Students with Disabilities, summarizes some of the past exclusionary practices applied to students with disabilities that resulted in low expectations for these students, along with how they were addressed in policies related to standards-based reform.

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Longitudinal National and State Trends in the Numbers of Students with Disabilities and their Primary Disability Categories

A new online interactive report, Percent of Students with Disabilities by Disability Categories for 2005-06 to 2016-17 (Data Analytics #8), shows the number and percent of K-12 students receiving special education services from 2005-06 to 2016-17, both nationally and for the 50 regular states. Viewers can select a number of different ways to look at the data in this report.

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Updates on State Graduation Policies for Students with Disabilities

NCEO’s report, Diploma Options, Graduation Requirements, and Exit Exams for Youth with Disabilities: 2017 National Study, examines the results of a national study on the status of state graduation policies and diploma options for youth with disabilities. State policies and perceptions of intended benefits and possible unintended consequences are summarized and compared to the findings of a previous study by Johnson, Thurlow, and Schuelka (2012).

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Perspectives of Educators on Classroom Implementation of Accessibility Features and Accommodations

The DIAMOND project has released another report about educators’ perspectives on classroom implementation of accessibility features and accommodations, Additional Educators’ Perspectives on Classroom Implementation of Accessibility Features and Accommodations. The report describes a second cohort of educators who participated in phone interviews in three of DIAMOND’s nine project state. In addition to providing detailed information on the responses of the 34 educators, the report provides summaries of the perspectives of all 74 educators’ in the two cohorts.

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NCEO’s National Assessment Center is supported through a Cooperative Agreement (#H326G160001) with the Research to Practice Division, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. The Center is affiliated with the Institute on Community Integration at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. The contents of this report were developed under the Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Department of Education, but do not necessarily represent the policy or opinions of the U.S. Department of Education or Office within it. Readers should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Project Officer: David Egnor

Welcome

Greetings from NCEO in a new year – 2019!  How quickly it arrived. In this newsletter, we highlight several publications that have been released since our October, 2018 newsletter. They include a brief on approaches to examining district alternate assessment participation rates, a proceedings document on the 1% Cap National Convening, and a brief on suggestions for showing that proficiency on a state’s alternate achievement standards are consistent with the requirements of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Also in this issue is an update on news from the TIES project (including recent publications and the project’s Facebbook page). Finally, in this issue, we provide information on sessions at the annual conferences of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME).

– Martha Thurlow, NCEO Director

Examining District Alternate Assessment Participation Rates

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (NCIEA) recently jointly published a Brief titled Guidance on Examining District Alternate Assessment Participation Rates. This Brief addresses important questions that arise for states as they implement federal alternate assessments aligned to alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) participation requirements.

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Proceedings of the 1% Cap National Convening

More than 200 individuals gathered in Boston on October 18 and 19, 2018 to listen to each other, share ideas, and develop state-level action plans. The purpose of the National Convening was to support states as they work with local education agencies to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requirement of a 1% cap on the participation of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities in the alternate assessment aligned with alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS).

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Aligning Alternate Achievement Standards with WIOA

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) with support from the Research and Training Center on Community Living (RRC-CL) recently published a Brief titled Suggestions for Aligning Alternate Achievement Standards with WIOA (NCEO Brief #16). This Brief provides information on alternate achievement standards and WIOA, then 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 and integrated employment.

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Latest TIES Center News

The NCEO-affiliated TIES Center (The National Technical Assistance Center on Inclusive Policies and Practices for Students with the Most Significant Cognitive Disabilities) has two new publications and a Facebook page.

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NCEO Presentations at Council for Exceptional Children Conference

NCEO staff were involved in several presentations and posters at the Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC) annual conference held from January 29 through February 2, 2019, in Indianapolis, Indiana, many of which are available at the NCEO website.

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Upcoming NCEO Presentations (NABE, AERA, and NCME)

This Spring NCEO staff will be presenting at conferences of the National Association on Bilingual Education, the American Educational Research Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education.

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NCEO’s National Assessment Center is supported through a Cooperative Agreement (#H326G160001) with the Research to Practice Division, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. The Center is affiliated with the Institute on Community Integration at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. The contents of this report were developed under the Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Department of Education, but do not necessarily represent the policy or opinions of the U.S. Department of Education or Office within it. Readers should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Project Officer: David Egnor

Welcome

Fall is in the air, and we have many things to share with you. These include a report from the forum on speech-to-text and scribing that was held as a presession to the National Conference on Student Assessment. Several other NCEO reports are highlighted as well, including one on a literature review on measuring ELP progress of ELs with disabilities and ELs, one on publicly reported assessment results, and three on state assessment participation, performance, and accommodations data. Finally, this issue provides information on a new resource that is coming soon from NCEO’s TIES Center, an Impact issue on inclusive education for K-8 students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.

– Martha Thurlow, NCEO Director

Forum on Speech-to-Text for Everyone on All Tests

There is a need to develop greater clarity on the implementation of speech-to-text and scribing during instruction and assessment. On June 26, 2018 NCEO and the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Assessing Special Education Students (ASES) State Collaborative on Assessments and Student Standards (SCASS) held a joint forum on issues surrounding the use of speech-to-text. The purpose of the pre-session was to discuss current and emerging issues with the use of speech-to-text for all students.

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A Review of the Literature on Measuring English Language Proficiency Progress of English Learners with Disabilities and English Learners

A new literature review published by NCEO examines evidence-based practices used (or recommended for use) to measure progress of English learners (ELs) with disabilities on English language proficiency (ELP) assessments. The report discusses how studies have defined ELP progress and the extent to which studies have examined ELP progress for ELs with disabilities.

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NCEO Reports: 2015-16 Publicly Reported Assessment Results for Students with Disabilities and ELs with Disabilities

The NCEO report, 2015-16 Publicly Reported Assessment Results for Students with Disabilities and ELs with Disabilities, is the 19th report by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) describing how states publicly report online assessment data for students with disabilities in K-12 schools in the United States.

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New APR Snapshot Reports

Three new briefs in the APR Snapshot series provide a quick look at the participation and performance of students receiving special education services in statewide assessments used for Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) accountability. These new briefs use federally submitted data from the 2015-16 school year.

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New Resource Arriving Soon on Supporting Inclusive Education

Staff of the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and its TIES Center are guest editors for the upcoming publication, Impact: Feature Issue on Inclusive Education for K-8 Students with the Most Significant Cognitive Disabilities. Scheduled for release in late fall, this publication from the Institute on Community Integration (ICI), University of Minnesota, shares strategies, research, personal stories, and resources supporting inclusive education in our schools.

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NCEO’s National Assessment Center is supported through a Cooperative Agreement (#H326G160001) with the Research to Practice Division, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. The Center is affiliated with the Institute on Community Integration at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. The contents of this report were developed under the Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Department of Education, but do not necessarily represent the policy or opinions of the U.S. Department of Education or Office within it. Readers should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Project Officer: David Egnor