Overview

The main tenet of the standards movement, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education, is that “Schools, districts and state departments of education, along with students and families, are responsible for developing high levels of knowledge and skills in all students” (NASBE, 2002, p. 7). In the past, some groups of students have been left out of educational reform movements because of barriers to high achievement. These might include a perception that English language learners (ELLs)¹ and students with disabilities were not capable of challenging academic content, for example, and inequitable funding in urban schools with high concentrations of minority and low-income students (NASBE, 2002). The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) made it clear that states, districts, and schools are to hold high expectations for all students and work to improve outcomes for low performing groups. A central part of these mandated improvement efforts is using data to identify groups of students who are achieving poorly on statewide tests and find ways to improve instruction for the students so that they might achieve at higher rates in the future.

NCLB requires that accountability data be disaggregated and reported for some specific subgroups of students. According to Thurlow and Liu (2001), one group for which NCLB does not clearly mandate the public reporting of assessment data is students who are limited English proficient and also have disabilities. Students who are not tested, and students who are tested but whose data are not publicly reported, tend to remain invisible inside our educational system (Thurlow & Liu, 2001). Therefore, it is important for students with limited English proficiency and disabilities, a rapidly growing group², to be represented in discussions of standards-based assessment results.

At the present time, fewer than 10 states report large-scale assessment participation or performance data on students with limited English proficiency and disabilities (Albus, Thurlow, Minnema & Anderson, 2004). This report is part of a series aimed at providing an in depth look at one state’s data on the participation and performance of students with limited English proficiency and disabilities in assessments mandated by NCLB. A previous report (Liu, Barrera, Thurlow & Shyyan, 2005) examined data from the 1999–2000 administration of a state graduation test. This report adds to those data with results from the 2000–2001 administration of the graduation test.

¹ Students with limited English proficiency are increasingly referred to as English language learners or ELLs. We recognize that a number of terms are used in the field related to learners of English as a new or second language. We have adopted some of those terms for reference, but have chosen to use language and acronyms compliant with “person first” protocol and to minimize lengthy terms where possible. In this document we use the term “students with limited English proficiency.”

² Zehler, Fleischman, Hopstock, Pendzick and Stephenson (2003) have documented that English language learners with disabilities represent approximately 9% of all ELLs in public schools. Because the total number of ELLs is growing rapidly, it is logical to assume that the number of ELLs with disabilities is also growing.
 

Background

In Minnesota, Basic Standards Tests (BSTs) are assessments that students must pass to receive a high school diploma. Assessments for the diploma are administered in reading and mathematics for the first time in 8th grade and in writing for the first time in grade 10. In each content area, students must achieve a scale score of 600 or higher by the 12th grade in order to receive a diploma. Tests may be re-taken several times if the students do not meet the passing scale score.

In addition to their use as graduation requirement assessments, BSTs are also used as school accountability measures. Thus, the grade 8 reading and mathematics scores and the grade 10 writing scores were school accountability measures. During the 2000–2001 school year, additional components of the Basic Standards Tests at other grades were in the process of being implemented. This report examines only the participation and performance of students with limited English proficiency and disabilities (SLEPD) on the reading and mathematics components of the BST during their first attempt on the grade 8 administration.

The 2000–2001 technical manual for the Basic Standards Tests (Minnesota Department of Education [MDE], 2001) states that in that year exemptions from testing were allowed for some students with limited English proficiency (SLEP). “Students with limited English proficiency must participate in the accountability testing unless they have been in the United States fewer than 12 months. Only these very few LEP students may be exempted from testing” (Appendix C, p. 3). Also, during the time period represented in this report, students with disabilities could be exempted from the tests if the goals and objectives of their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) did not match the content of the state tests.

The data in this report come from the year in which NCLB legislation was passed, but had not yet taken effect. Requirements for alternate assessments for students with severe disabilities and for at least 95% participation of students in a subgroup to be tested for accountability purposes had not yet been implemented.

Accommodations and Modifications

Students who participated in the BSTs in 2000–2001 were allowed some accommodations and modifications. The Minnesota Department of Education defines accommodations as minor changes that do not change the validity, reliability, or security of the test (MDE 2001, p. 5). Modifications are changes in the standard, the test, or the testing circumstances that alter the level of difficulty of what is being assessed (MDE, 2001, p. 6). Accommodations are permitted on the reading and mathematics portions of the test in 8th grade, when the test is used for accountability purposes, and on the writing portion in 10th grade. Modifications are only allowed for students with disabilities in later retests. When they are used, they result in a student receiving a “pass individual” notation. The data files used for this report did not contain information about whether students received an accommodation or a modification. Therefore, the report does not address this topic. Data in the report represent numbers of students passing the reading or mathematics tests at the “state level,” meaning the state test is taken without modifications.

Method

The Minnesota Department of Education collected the data compiled for this report. After preparing the data files and discarding unusable data, the researchers ran descriptive statistical analyses using the SPSS Information Analysis System. Numbers showing total student enrollment were based on fall counts and may differ from counts of students enrolled on the day of testing several months later. Following the presentation of the results of our analyses of participation and performance data for 2000–2001, we compare the 2000–2001 results to the data from 1999–2000.

Data

Participation in 2000–2001

As indicated in Table 1, in 2000–2001 eighth grade participation of subgroups taking the reading and mathematics BSTs ranged from 88% to 97%. At the time, these rates were considered to be relatively high. The 95% participation requirement for accountability for all subgroups that was implemented under NCLB in 2001 had not yet taken effect. Students with limited English proficiency and disabilities (SLEPD) had the lowest participation rates with 88% in both reading and mathematics. Students with limited English proficiency (SLEP) and students with disabilities (SD) had slightly higher percentages of participation (90%–91%). The total group of 8th grade students had the highest percent participating with 97%. This was nearly 10% higher than that of students with limited English proficiency and disabilities. For each group, the percentage of students participating in reading versus mathematics was similar.

Table 1: Eighth Grade Participation for the 2000–2001 BST Reading and Mathematics Tests

Key: SLEPD = students with limited English proficiency and disabilities; SLEP = students with limited English proficiency without disabilities; SD = students with disabilities without limited English proficiency; ALL = all 8th grade students

Participation of Students by Disability Category

Table 2 shows the participation of students with limited English proficiency and disabilities (SLEPD) and all students with disabilities (SD) according to the students’ primary disability category. When looking at these data, readers are cautioned to keep in mind that some disability categories were quite small in size. Also, there were no students with limited English proficiency and deaf-blindness in this particular year.

Table 2: Participation of all 8th Grade Students with Disabilities and Students with Limited English Proficiency and Disabilities in the 2000–2001 BSTs for Reading and Mathematics