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NCEO Synthesis Report 33

Published by the National Center on Educational Outcomes

Prepared by:

Martha Thurlow • Allison House • Chris Boys • Dorene Scott • James Ysseldyke

April 2000

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

Thurlow, M., House, A., Boys, C., Scott, D., & Ysseldyke, J. (2000). State participation and accommodation policies for students with disabilities: 1999 update (Synthesis Report No. 33). 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/Synthesis33.html

Statewide assessments continue to be the primary component of accountability systems, yet there continues to be much variability in the accommodations and participation policies of the states. Federal law now recognizes that the exclusion of students with disabilities from state or district assessments provides an inaccurate understanding of student progress. New provisions in the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA (IDEA 97) require that students with disabilities be included in state and district assessments, with appropriate accommodations if necessary. In this report, we summarize states’ current policies on the participation of students with disabilities in large-scale assessment, and the accommodations noted in state policies as available for those students. In developing this summary, we also checked for changes in state assessment policies. Generalizations from these efforts are:

• State participation and accommodation policies continue to rely on the IEP team to make decisions.

• There has been a decrease in attention to the type of disability, and an increase in attention to curricular activity or matching assessment to the course content.

• Additional testing options have become widely available, with many states allowing partial participation in testing.

• A significant change for state policies is the addition of accommodation decision-making criteria. These criteria help IEP teams make more systematic decisions, and help to ensure appropriate accommodations.

• The description of accommodations as standard or nonstandard appears to be increasing.

These clear findings are balanced by some unknowns that require further study. For example, there are several states that are known to provide accommodations to all students who need them—not just those with disabilities—but identifying these states through their state policies on participation and accommodations is difficult or impossible. Second, states vary considerably, with some much more accommodating than others. Some of the most accommodating states allow changes in test procedures, such as writing answers in test booklet or separate settings, to all students. These states do not consider the changes to be accommodations; thus, they do not appear on our grids. Finally, despite increasing openness to participation and accommodations in policy, we still have little knowledge about what happens in practice.

Overview

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) has been tracking since 1990 states’ progress in ensuring that all students participate appropriately in assessments, including students with disabilities. In the early 1990s, McGrew, Thurlow, Shriner, and Spiegel (1992) looked at the participation of students with disabilities in both national and statewide assessments, and found that 34 out of the 49 reporting states said that they had formal or written decision rules on the participation of students with disabilities in statewide assessments. In 1993, Thurlow, Ysseldyke, and Silverstein examined the literature on testing accommodations for students with disabilities, and updated and added to the earlier work on states’ policies. Common testing accommodations were discussed in the report, as well as policy, legal, and psychometric considerations when using accommodations. In addition, a classification system was used for the different types of accommodations commonly offered. The four classes of accommodations were: presentation format, which were changes in how tests were presented and included accommodations like providing Braille versions of the tests or orally reading the directions to students; response format, which were changes in the manner in which students gave their responses and included accommodations such as having a student point to a response or use a computer for responding; setting of the test, which could be at home, or in small groups; and finally, timing of the test, which could include extending the time allowed, or providing more breaks during testing.

Thurlow et al. (1993) provided information from a sample of states on their participation policies (who should participate in their statewide tests) and their accommodations policies (which accommodations could be used during testing). In 1993, there were 28 states with written policies on the participation of students with disabilities in their tests. At this time, there was a great deal of variability in the types of decision rules states had for the participation of students with disabilities. Some of the factors commonly considered at that time included the type of disability the student had, the degree of the student’s impairment, and the percentage of time the student was mainstreamed or receiving special services. Rules sometimes called for looking at only one of these variables, but more commonly at a combination of the variables.

At the time the 1993 report was published, there were 21 states with written policies on accommodations. Again, there was a great deal of variability across states in the accommodations that were allowed. The types of accommodations that were most frequently allowed—and prohibited—were changes to the presentation format. Presentation format changes most frequently allowed included offering Braille or large-print versions of the tests. Those most frequently prohibited included oral reading, video, or signed presentations of the tests.

In 1995, NCEO updated the 1993 information in two separate reports. The report on participation reproduced and summarized information from the states’ written guidelines on the participation of students with disabilities in their state tests (Thurlow, Scott, & Ysseldyke, 1995b). The number of states with written guidelines increased from the 28 in 1993 to 43 in 1995. Noteworthy variables mentioned most by states in the 1995 report were the involvement of the Individualized Educational Program (IEP) team in making decisions about the participation of students with disabilities in testing, the role of parents, issues related to partial testing, the placement or category of disability of the student, and the reporting of the students’ results.

Policies for accommodations were also re-examined in 1995, with a total of 38 written guidelines provided by states, up from the 1993 total of 21 guidelines (Thurlow, Scott, & Ysseldyke, 1995a). Again, a number of accommodations proved controversial. Use of a scribe, in which a student can give answers to a person (scribe) who will write them down, was explicitly prohibited in one state, and allowed in 15 other states. The use of a calculator during testing was prohibited by five states and allowed by four states. Finally, reading a test aloud was prohibited by nine states and allowed by two states (this often depended on whether it was the reading test or other content area). Overall, while most states offered accommodations, there was little consistency in the apparent acceptability of various accommodations. Almost every state had revised its guidelines between the publication of the 1993 and 1995 reports.

In 1997 (Thurlow, Seyfarth, Scott, & Ysseldyke, 1997), one of the most notable changes from earlier reports was a decrease in the number of active participation policies and a static number of active accommodation policies; this was likely due to many states suspending either their policies or their assessments during this time. In addition, nearly every state with an active policy had changed it in the two years since the 1995 analysis. As before, the IEP team and parents were to help make participation decisions. Type of disability became less important in decision-making, and curricular validity became more important. A growing number of states were preparing to offer alternate assessments for students with severe disabilities.

Accommodations policies continued to have common themes between the 1995 and 1997 reports. Reading the test aloud was both widely allowed and widely prohibited. Calculators were more widely allowed and less frequently prohibited. Proctors and scribes were also more widely available in 1997 than they were in 1995, with nearly three-quarters of states with policies allowing their use. States’ creativity in developing accommodations intended to meet the needs of their students with disabilities was demonstrated by the increasing number of different accommodations available. An analysis of the differences in accommodations available in norm-referenced and criterion-referenced testing revealed that while there were generally more accommodations available for criterion-referenced tests, setting accommodations tended to be very similar across the two types of assessments.

Why Update?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was amended and new legislation for Title I services went into effect after the 1997 analysis of states’ policies. In addition, new documents (e.g., Thurlow, Elliott, & Ysseldyke, 1998) have helped raise awareness of the need to include students with disabilities in large-scale assessments, and have provided assistance on how states can be more inclusive. Since states have been actively working on the issues of participation and accommodations in testing, their policies are anticipated to have changed significantly.

Gathering Policies

To update the NCEO files on state participation and accommodations policies, we first assessed the need for updating. We noted that two states had not revised their policies since 1995, and seven states did not have guidelines in the 1997 publication. We knew that many states had been developing or revising their guidelines because of calls we had received from them about these efforts. Thus, we requested information from all 50 states. We also requested guidelines from educational entities that receive special education funds, unique states such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the District of Columbia. We accepted new documents through mid-August, 1999. We made the appropriate updates to our matrices and then sent the new tables back to the states for review. States could indicate that there were no changes needed, ask for more information in order to decide whether the tables were accurate, or change the tables. If states indicated the need for a change after reviewing the summary table, we requested written documentation before making the changes. We accepted any new changes or revisions through October 15, 1999. In total, we updated the participation policies of 48 states and the accommodation policies of 48 states. A complete list of state documents is in Appendix A. We also received policies from three unique states (BIA, CNMI, DoDDS). These policies are included in Appendix B.

Presenting the Policies

In 1995, the text of all relevant state policies was included in the updates, with highlights presented prior to the actual policies. The current report followed the format that was implemented in 1997, in which tables were created to summarize the policies. For these tables, we provide an appendix with the category definitions that we used when deciding whether a state’s policy included language referring to each category (see Appendix C).

Presenting policy information in tables makes the information easier to use, but sometimes obscures the complexity that underlies the policies. For example, the length and detail of the original source documents, which ranged from several sentences to hundreds of pages, is not apparent. Another difference is the specificity of the documents to the tests given. Some states specify accommodations for each test individually, while other states provide accommodation guidelines, but do not make them specific to the different tests given in the state.

We have summarized the information we collected in two sets of tables in this report, one set for participation guidelines and a second set for accommodation policies. In addition, we have summarized the information from the states that differentiate between standard and nonstandard accommodations.

In 1997, NCEO reported that 40 of the 50 states had active policies on the participation of students with disabilities in statewide testing. Since that report was published, all states with statewide assessment have established some sort of participation policy.

While all 50 states responded to NCEO’s request for information, Nebraska indicated that it does not currently have a statewide assessment and thus does not have participation criteria. In addition, Iowa provided participation criteria but since they pertain to district assessments, they are not included in this document. The Bureau of Indian Affairs responded that it recommends that its schools use the policies of the specific states in which they are located.

Table 1 summarizes the variables included in the participation policies in each state. It is evident from the table that nearly every state with an assessment policy in place uses the IEP team’s decision as one of the primary criteria to determine whether a student participates in the statewide assessment. Colorado was the only state that did not identify the IEP team in its participation guidelines. New York specified that the decision is based on the student’s IEP, and the principal or the local team may decide on specific accommodations if necessary.

Table 1. Participation Policy Variables