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Initial Perceptions of Educators as They Work Toward Including Students with Disabilities in Minnesota's High Standards

Minnesota Report 25

Published by the National Center on Educational Outcomes

Prepared by Sandra Thompson, Martha Thurlow, Lorien Parson, and Sara Barrow

July 2000

Any or all portions of this document may be reproduced and distributed without prior permission, provided the source is cited as:

Thompson, S., Thurlow, M., Parson, L., & Barrow, S. (2000). Initial perceptions of educators as they work toward including students with disabilities in Minnesota's High Standards (Minnesota Report No. 25). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes. Retrieved [today's date], from the World Wide Web: http://education.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/MnReport25.html

Overview

This report presents findings from an investigation of the perceptions, hopes and fears of educators as they work toward including students with disabilities in Minnesota’s High Standards. The findings are from questionnaires and interviews that were conducted from January to March 1999, with educators across all grade levels from ten schools within a large suburban school district. This study is one of the first in Minnesota to look at emerging efforts toward standards-based reform for students with disabilities. It is part of the Minnesota Assessment Project, a four-year, federally funded effort to promote and evaluate the participation of students with limited English proficiency and students with disabilities in Minnesota’s Graduation Standards.

Minnesota’s Graduation Standards

Minnesota is in the midst of a major educational reform. We are changing from a “teacher-centered” and “curriculum-based” educational system to a “student-centered” and “standards-based” system. The focus of the reform asks the questions:

•     What are students expected to know?

•     What should students be able to do?

Historically, Minnesota, like other states, awarded diplomas for credits earned by students based on hours of instruction and passing grades. Required subjects included language arts, social studies, mathematics, science, health, physical education, and various electives. Postsecondary institutions, employers, parents, and students themselves could not tell from a credit-based transcript what content had been mastered or how performance compared with that of students from other instructors, schools, or districts. Students going on to postsecondary education with “As and Bs” often found themselves unprepared for college work. Students with disabilities may have received high grades in “special ed” courses with names like “Biology” but were actually taught from a significantly “watered down” curriculum by special education teachers with little appropriate content expertise.

Over the years, many have realized that credit or course based graduation requirements alone rarely result in consistent opportunities to learn and demonstrate knowledge and skill. The lack of information about actual skills or knowledge required for a diploma has increased the call for results-based graduation requirements nationwide.

Minnesota’s graduation standards now require students to meet or exceed basic and high standards of achievement to receive a diploma. To meet Minnesota’s Basic Requirements, students must demonstrate competency in reading, writing, and mathematics. A series of content standards define what students need to know and be able to do to achieve a high level of performance. To receive a diploma, a student must produce a record of work showing achievement in a number of the content standards. The High Standards are organized into ten learning areas (see Table 1).

Table 1. High Standards Learning Areas

Beginning in kindergarten, all public school students start learning skills and concepts to prepare them to achieve the high school level High Standards. Public high school students from the class of 2002 and beyond must complete 24 of 48 possible standards from the ten learning areas. Nine of the standards are required for all students. Twelve standards are chosen from groupings within the learning areas. For example, students must choose two of five different science standards. The remaining three standards are electives.

Student achievement of the High Standards is assessed by locally designed performance assessments. A performance assessment is made up of locally designed assignments that, taken together, show whether a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills outlined in the standard. These assignments ask students to apply their knowledge in real-world situations. Teachers assign students a score of 4, 3, 2, or 1 for each performance assessment package a student completes. Teachers score performance assessments by comparing a student’s work with a description of the desired performance. Local school districts continue to determine course grades, grade point averages, and class rank.

Minnesota has developed rules pertaining to the inclusion of students with disabilities in high standards. These rules state that students with IEPs in kindergarten through grade 8 must have all primary, intermediate, and middle level preparatory content standards considered by the student’s IEP team for inclusion in the student’s IEP. A student’s IEP team needs to consider high standards graduation requirements when a student with a disability is 14 years old or registers for grade 9. An IEP team also needs to consider a student’s transition plan when determining which of the required and elective content standards a student will select.

For students with IEPs in kindergarten through grade 8, IEP teams may modify preparatory content standards. Teams need to define which parts of each content standard a student will work toward meeting. If a team determines that a student is to be exempt from one or more of the content standards, the exemption must be explained in the IEP. When exempt status is selected for a content standard, the team needs to determine whether a different standard or IEP goal specific to the learning area is appropriate and include that goal in the student’s plan.

For a high school student with an IEP, the student’s IEP team needs to:

(1)   determine whether the student will pursue the content standard without modification;

(2)   determine whether one or more of the 21 required content standards will be modified to an individual level;

(3) define the elective content standards that the student will also pursue and whether, for each elective, the student will pursue the content standard without modification, or the content standard modified to an individual level; or

(4)   determine whether the student is exempt from one or more of the graduation requirements. When exempt status is adopted for a content standard, the team needs to determine whether a different standard or IEP goal specific to the learning area is appropriate and include that goal in the student’s plan.

Congress used the 1997 reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 97) to clarify and reaffirm the rights of students with disabilities to receive a high quality education consistent with state education standards. IDEA 97 also stresses the right of students with disabilities to participate fully in the general curriculum with their non-disabled peers. The Committee Report that accompanied the new law to Congress explained the intent behind the changes. “The new emphasis on participation in the general education curriculum... is intended to produce attention to the accommodations and adjustments necessary for disabled children to access the general education curriculum and the special services which may be necessary for appropriate participation in particular areas of the curriculum” (U.S. Senate, 1997, p. 17). Not only must the IEP now contain a statement of how the child’s disability will affect participation in the general curriculum, but it must explain why any student will not be participating in the general education classroom, as well as extracurricular and non-academic activities.

In addition, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the Improving America’s Schools Act represent a significant move toward including all students in education reform efforts. These Acts define “all students” as specifically including students with disabilities. The Acts also require standards to be developed in a way that will help all students reach higher standards, and assessments are to include all students.

Graduation Standards recognize that student learning also takes place outside of the classroom. Local school districts have policies and procedures to give students credit for standards achieved through extracurricular activities, activities outside of school, and community and work experiences. The information above and additional information about graduation standards can be obtained from the Department of Children, Families, and Learning web site: http://children.state.mn.us/grad/gradhom.htm.

Related Research

Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) conducted a study during the 1998-99 school year to evaluate how teachers understand and use standards in teaching and learning (Bemis & Wahlstrom, 1999). The study found that teachers who attended more than one training session were more likely to agree that they felt prepared to implement the standards. Most teachers surveyed (72%) noted that they felt overwhelmed by the standards, especially because of the demands on their time, complexity of the performance packages, changes in expectations from the state level, and the wide range of student abilities. Nearly half of the teachers stated that their feelings of being overwhelmed had decreased over time. Also, nearly half of the teachers who attended multiple training sessions reported that the implementation of the standards led to a difference in their teaching. Seventy-eight percent of the teachers surveyed believed that they would feel prepared to fully implement the standards within the next three years.

Another interesting survey question from the CAREI study asked teachers whether their beliefs about student capacity for learning had changed as a result of implementing standards. Several teachers wrote about their beliefs having shifted to become more positive due to unanticipated levels of student performance. These teachers also noted that doing individual assessments forced them to notice each student’s strengths, and providing students with a variety of ways to demonstrate their knowledge gave each student more opportunities to “shine.” In response to questions about the expectation of students with disabilities to achieve high standards, most teachers reported having some experience implementing the standards with students with disabilities and sought resources or advice to aid in identifying accommodations for the assessment of these students, although many were not sure whether the accommodations were successful.

In a study conducted by CRESST (Aschbacher, 1993), factors that facilitated development and implementation of standards-based instruction and assessment, and barriers teachers and administrators faced were delineated. Factors that facilitated development included:

•  Purposeful passion. A strong commitment among practitioners was one of most important factors found in this study.

•     Being part of a group. Teachers needed to be part of a group to meet and share ideas and support, but it was difficult to find time to meet often enough.

•  Administrative support. The driving force behind the implementation of standards was a strongly committed district office that was willing to find funding for teachers’ professional development, look beyond the district to find necessary expertise, and set up task forces to carry out major development tasks.

•  Sustained technical assistance. This was found to be important to make good ideas succeed.

•     Results. The study found increased teacher expectations for students, changes in curriculum and instruction, increased collegiality and professionalism, and positive effects on students’ self esteem.

Factors that the CRESST study found to be barriers to development included:

•     Emphasis on learning activities rather than outcomes. Teachers were able to brainstorm general goals for students, but reluctant to articulate specific student outcomes to be measured. When asked to share assessments, they tended to describe tasks, omitting mention of intended student goals. The study found that teachers and administrators were more comfortable when they were held accountable for simply covering important curriculum content rather than for improving student achievement.

•     Difficulties specifying criteria for judging student work. Teachers were not comfortable with judging student work in a rigorous manner or being held accountable for those judgments. In the study, teachers spent time discussing student activities rather than criteria for judging student performance. Researchers found rare examples of teachers who were comfortable with intense reflection, deep conceptual involvement, and complex student outcomes rather than simple content coverage.

•     Assessment anxiety. Teachers were well aware that grading had consequences for students and implications for themselves professionally. They preferred not to give portfolios a grade, stating that they did not want to penalize students for their own inexperience with the portfolio process.

•     Lack of time. There was strong consensus in all study sites that lack of time (and money to pay for that time) was a very critical barrier to developing and implementing standards and performance assessments. Teachers felt they needed time to learn about and grow comfortable with performance assessments, develop or review and select them, use them in the classroom, be trained to rate student work, do the scoring, and synthesize results of more complex assessments to make instructional and program decisions.

•     Need for training and ongoing support on how to develop and implement performance assessments in schools. Teachers needed a great deal of information, practice, models, feedback, and encouragement to grasp the notion of new assessments and attempt to use them in their classes.

Students with Disabilities and High Standards

Over the past 20 years, we have seen extensive efforts to reform education at all levels, with increased emphasis on accountability for results. States are setting standards for student performance, and are either relying on existing state assessment systems or developing new assessment systems to monitor educational progress. Unfortunately, these systems are excluding large numbers of students with disabilities. State special education involvement in standards-based reform is highest for practices directly related to students with disabilities, such as aggregating results of alternate assessments with general assessment results. There is little involvement when the inclusion of students with disabilities is seen as detrimental, such as when there are rewards and sanctions for accountability results. (Thompson & Thurlow, 1999; Thurlow, Ysseldyke, Gutman, & Geenan, 1998).

McLaughlin, Nolet, Rhim, and Henderson (1999) were interested in studying the effects of general education reforms on students with disabilities. In-depth case studies were done in several districts across five eastern states. Special education and regular education teachers and administrators were interviewed about how the standards were affecting curriculum and instruction in their classrooms and how students with disabilities were participating in the standards. Researchers found that, generally, teachers and administrators expected most students with disabilities to participate in and be assessed in the standards. They believed that students with low incidence disabilities would require individualized standards. There was more concern over the participation and performance of students with high incidence disabilities and low achieving students. Concerns were greater at the secondary level, due to greater academic demands and less flexibility in the curriculum. There was a higher level of concern in states where the standards were tied to high school graduation.

McLaughlin et al. (1999) categorized comments about the effects of standards on students with disabilities into the following general areas:

•     Providing access to a broad and balanced curriculum. Special education teachers believed that the inclusion of students with disabilities in the standards lead to exposure to a variety of subject matter. In addition, they believed that the emphasis on authentic assessment, problem solving, and project-based learning inherent in the standards was beneficial for students with special learning needs.

•     Focusing instruction. Special education teachers thought that the standards helped them to focus their instruction and be explicit about requirements. They thought the standards would lead to more challenging learner goals for students with disabilities and those students would be pushed beyond the goals of their IEPs. They also thought the standards would lead to a set of clear expectations across grades and schools.

•     Competing priorities. Special education teachers were concerned about finding the instructional time and opportunities to help students with disabilities learn the new content as well as teaching them skills that would be functional for their own unique needs and learning styles.

•     Increased collaboration. General education teachers reported that the standards lead to increased communication with each other. In addition, all teachers indicated that the standards gave them a common language with which to discuss individual students. All believed that collaboration was easier in the elementary school setting. Collaboration was also easier when special education teachers were members of instructional teams or departments.

•     Time and curricular modifications. Both special and regular education teachers reported uncertainty over when to modify a standard versus using an accommodation. All also were concerned about the instructional time required to teach the standards.

McLaughlin et al. (1999) concluded that all of the findings suggested that special education teachers need a framework for understanding general education curriculum as well as accessing that curriculum. There also must be opportunities for special and regular educators to collaborate to determine the breadth and depth of instruction necessary to help students with disabilities meet standards.

Method

Setting

The research for this project was based in a large suburban school district in Minnesota. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted with 90 educators across four elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools. We selected this district for the study because its size allowed for diversity in lifestyles and educational programming. In addition, the district was chosen because of its willingness and commitment to high standards and accountability. We also found every researcher’s dream within the district—two special education coordinators who were willing to work with us throughout the data collection process on scheduling and staff participation. This study would not have been possible without their assistance and support.

The study took place from January to March 1999. Unfortunately, these were the same months in which the Minnesota Legislature was in session. During this session, the House of Representatives passed a bill completely abolishing the graduation standards, and reverting to course requirements. The Senate wanted to keep the standards, with some major revisions. In the end, a compromise could not be reached within the conference committee, so the standards stood as written for another year. It is likely that the results of this study were influenced by this political uncertainty.

Subjects

Permission to participate in the study was requested from every building within the district and obtained from ten schools. Respondents included 90 educators representing special and general education as well as related services. Personnel included in the study were those who attended regularly scheduled special education staff meetings at each school building plus a few general educators who were specifically invited to participate in the study. As shown in Table 2, the majority of respondents were special education teachers. Table 3 shows that special education teachers worked with students with learning disabilities, mental impairments, or speech impairments. Respondents were fairly evenly dispersed across grade levels (Table 4).

Table 2. Positions of Respondents

Table 3. Disability areas represented by respondents

Table 4. Grade Levels Taught by Respondents

Procedures

Researchers visited each school, distributed questionnaires, and interviewed groups of staff members during regularly scheduled meetings. The entire process took 20-30 minutes at each school. Respondent participation was specifically planned to be brief in order to be the least intrusive to the important schedules of educators. Two researchers conducted each session. They first described the study to respondents, then distributed the questionnaires to be completed on the spot. Respondents were given approximately 10 minutes to complete the 16-item questionnaire. After completing the questionnaire, respondents were requested to answer four questions as a group. Each group took 10-15 minutes to respond to all four questions. Responses were recorded in a written format by the researchers. The questions included:

•     In an ideal world, what would it take to help students with disabilities meet high standards?

•     What are you working on to bring this to reality?

•     What do you see as barriers?

•     What are you doing/planning to overcome the barriers?

Results

Primary Responsibilities

The first group of survey questions referred to the primary responsibilities of educators and whether those responsibilities had changed since the high standards were mandated at the beginning of the school year. Comparisons were made by title of the respondents (Table 5), grade level taught (Table 6), and disability of students taught (Table 7). Overall, we found that the primary responsibilities of educators and administrators were still fairly traditional. General education teachers taught in classrooms, most special education teachers and related service providers taught in separate classrooms or resource rooms, and administrators spent most of their time performing administrative duties. About half of the respondents thought that their responsibilities had changed somewhat since the new standards were mandated. The other half had not noticed any change in responsibility.

Table 5. Primary Responsibilities by Title

Results of the analysis of primary responsibilities by grade level taught showed that, at the elementary school level, all special educators surveyed provided special education services in a “pullout” environment, that is, students were removed from their general education classrooms to receive special education services individually or in small groups in a special education classroom or resource room. At the middle school level, a greater number of teachers provided special education services within general education classrooms through team teaching or consulting (58%), with 42% providing services in special education or resource rooms. At the high school level 40% of the special education teachers provided services through team teaching and consulting models and 60% pulled students from general education classes for services (see Table 6).

Table 6. Primary Responsibilities of Special Educators by Grade Level

An analysis of the primary responsibilities of special educators by the disabilities of the students they taught (Table 7) showed that teachers of students with mental impairments provided all services in special education or resource rooms. Just under one third of the teachers of students with learning disabilities (29%) provided services within general education classrooms through team teaching or consulting, with two thirds (71%) providing services in special education or resource rooms. Educators working with students representing more than one disability were found in general education classrooms team teaching or consulting at a slightly higher rate (37%) than those teaching students with learning disabilities. The highest percentage of special education teachers team teaching or consulting with general educators was found among speech clinicians (47%).

Table 7. Primary Responsibilities of Special Educators by Student Disability  

Expectation to Meet Standards

One of the concerns often expressed is that the expectations of special educators for students with disabilities to meet high standards are too low. In order to validate this concern, we asked respondents what percent of the students with disabilities they work with could meet high standards at the state level and what percent they thought would need to be exempt from some or all of the high standards (see Table 8). Overall, 57% of the respondents thought that less than half of their students could meet the high standards at the state level. However, only 23% of the respondents thought that at least half of their students would be exempt from some or all of the high standards. Tables 9 and 10 show these expectations by grade level and disability.

Table 8. Number and percent of respondents expecting students to meet or be exempt from high standards

As shown in Table 9, about half of the special education teachers at the elementary school level (58%) thought that at least half of their students with disabilities could meet high standards at the state level. This expectation dropped to 42% of special education teachers at the middle school level, and down to 37% of special education teachers at the high school level.

Table 9. Percent of special education teachers expecting students to meet standards by grade