Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities: The Promise of UDL
Appendix I: Five Best-Practice Steps for States
- Careful stakeholder and policy maker development of desired student outcomes for the population, reflecting the best understanding of research and practice. Having clearly defined student outcomes is necessary to the creation of an appropriate assessment system. These outcomes must communicate clear connections to state standards. In order to make this possible for significantly disabled students, different states have modified their content standards so that these standards are achievable by students with disabilities. Educators work these standards into the scoring systems that are used in the alternate assessments.
- Careful development, testing, and refinement of assessment methods. It is important to create alternate assessments that provide "high quality evidence" of student achievement. However, this process is sometimes lengthy and requires that pilots of various assessments be done so that the most appropriate assessments are used. In addition, proper training and support for teachers and other educational professionals who administer these alternate assessments is needed.
- Scoring of evidence according to professionally accepted standards. In order to be able to track the progress of significantly disabled students accurately, states need to set thorough guidelines on how the results of alternate assessments should be scored. In order for this to be achieved, training for scorers must be provided, scorers need to meet competency standards for scoring the assessments, and reexamination of the consistency and competency of scorers throughout the scoring process must be administered. In addition to this, Quenemoen, Rigney, and Thurlow (2002) cite that states must also engage in dual scoring and third party tie breakers to ensure the accuracy of the scores given.
- Standard-setting process to allow use of results in reporting and accountability systems. After scores are determined, the work of the students is then reexamined so "bands" of cut scores across achievement descriptors can be identified by a panel of education and assessment professionals.
- Continuous improvement of the assessment process. In order to achieve a successful assessment process, states must continually revise rubrics, edit achievement descriptors, and focus on the training of teachers to implement the alternate assessment process. In addition to that, increased amounts of research has resulted in increased test reliability, test validity, and connection between improving alternate assessment scores and improvements in instruction.
Quenemoen, R., Rigney, S., & Thurlow, M. (2002). Use of alternate assessment results in reporting and accountability systems: Conditions for use based on research and practice (Synthesis Report 43). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.