Product Description:
This report is the seventh in a series of surveys that have been conducted by NCEO since 1991. This year's findings include:
- More students with disabilities are participating in statewide testing, and states are better at documenting actual numbers participating. Still, only 23 states actually provided participation data. The variability in participation and accommodation rates is striking, but these differences may reflect differences in definitions.
- High stakes attached to school or district performance and lack of exposure of students with disabilities to test content are factors that inhibit greater participation of students with disabilities in assessment systems.
- Most states are in the process of developing their alternative assessments. Expected rates of students unable to participate in regular assessments varies considerably in the 29 states ready to make predictions, implying that there will also be large variations in alternate assessment participation rates.
- Test results are used primarily for guiding statewide policy decisions, decisions to reform schools, and decisions about individual students. Yet, about one-third of states use the results in informal ways, often as a result of parent and community pressure.
- Strategies used most often by states to meet the assessment provisions of IDEA are training and the dissemination of written policies. Greatest needs for training involve clarifying how student goals are aligned with state standards, and defining performance standards for 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.
- Lack of resources and inadequate assessments are seen as the greatest barriers to obtaining educational accountability information on students with disabilities.
- Best practice information continues to lead the list of preferred technical assistance, but the desire for obtaining information from the Internet has soared since 1997.
These findings highlight the current status of students with disabilities at the end of a century marked by dramatic changes in measuring the outcomes of education for students with disabilities. The findings reinforce the need to continue to survey state directors of special education about the status of special education outcomes.
Available online at: http://www.cehd.umn.edu/nceo/onlinepubs/statespeceducoutcomes1999.pdf
