States and other educational entities receiving Part B funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) submitted their Annual Performance Reports to the U.S. Secretary of Education on or before March 31, 2004. These reports contained information on a variety of indicators, including assessment participation and performance…

This report examines this state-level knowledge base to determine the challenges that state educational agencies face when including English language learners with disabilities in statewide assessments and the solutions they have identified. To do this telephone interviews were conducted with state department personnel in the areas of assessment,…

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…

Part of understanding the issues that surround the implementation of transformative federal mandates such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is the accumulation of sound, evidenced-based findings that are coupled with rich descriptive explanatory findings. By doing so, the research community supports educational practice to continually…

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) has been tracking and analyzing state policies on assessment participation and accommodations since 1992. The purpose of the current analysis is to update information on these policies that was last reported by NCEO in 2002 (based on 2001 data). The current analysis of states' 2003 participation…

This report is the seventh analysis of state reports conducted by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) to examine the extent to which states publicly report information about students with disabilities in statewide assessments. Descriptions of statewide testing systems are presented and examined as to whether these systems included…

Universal design of assessment has been an important step forward in making tests more accessible to students with disabilities. An issue affecting the universal design approach is the need to review individual items, potentially hundreds of them. Ideally, there would be a statistical procedure available that would first identify items that are…

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) has been tracking and analyzing state policies on assessment participation and accommodations since 1992. The purpose of the current analysis is to update information on these policies that was last reported by NCEO in 2005 (based on 2003 data). The current analysis of states' 2005 participation…

This manual offers states a tool to assist in the development or enhancement of guidelines for access assistants. Whether a state already has guidelines or is just in the process of establishing them, this manual will provide structure to the process and many examples of criteria already included by states. This manual was developed to accompany…

Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and 504 Plans often recommend the use of accommodations to facilitate the learning of classroom material by students with disabilities. Since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1997, students with disabilities are expected to participate in state and district-wide assessments, using…

Universal design for assessments is an approach to educational assessment based on principles of accessibility for a wide variety of end users. Elements of universal design include inclusive test population; precisely defined constructs; accessible, non-biased items; tests that are amenable to accommodations; simple, clear and intuitive…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires the reporting of participation in assessments overall and by subgroup, including students with disabilities. As states and school districts strive to meet the goals for adequate yearly progress required by NCLB, the use of individual accommodations continues to be scrutinized for effectiveness,…

Alternate assessment acts as a mechanism for inclusion in large-scale educational assessments for those students with disabilities who cannot participate in regular state and district assessments, even with accommodations and modifications. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), the Individuals with Disabilities Educational Improvement Act…

This report summarizes the 2003-2004 state assessment information that was submitted to the U.S. Department of Education by states in their Annual Performance Reports. States and other educational entities receiving Part B funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) submitted their Annual Performance Reports to the U.S.…

This study addresses three questions: First, considering the full group of students and the special education subgroup, what is the likely effect of minimum cell size and confidence interval size on school-level Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) determinations? Second, what effects do the changing minimum cell sizes have on inclusion of special…