Concerns and discussion in assessment debate

By Miriam K. Freedman

The recent summary in The Special Educator® ( see Accommodations for assessment must be broad, report states, Feb. 23, 2001, pa. 6 ) of the Oregon's Blue Ribbon Panel report, Do No Harm , raises many concerns.

Many of the high-stakes testing recommendations to the Oregon Department of Education have the potential to change policy in numerous other states.

If adopted, the panel's recommendations, may erode higher standards and long-term benefits for children with disabilities, while squandering precious public support for true education reform.

It's important for you to understand the following points of caution. Statewide testing must be implemented correctly to promote high standards for all students, provide valid and meaningful results and help state accountability efforts.

The goal of stating these concerns is to generate meaningful dialogue among all stakeholders.

Below, the panel's recommendations are italicized. Concerns about the recommendations are in old. 1. Students with learning disabilities must be provided with a broad list of accommodations on assessments and must be allowed to use any accommodation they use in the classroom if the accommodation is listed in the student's Individualized Education Program or Section 504 plan. A state should only disallow an accommodation if there is evidence to show the accommodation invalidates the score interpretation. This ignores the key difference between "accommodations" and "modifications," as well as test validity requirements.

Both accommodations and modifications provide changes in test format, presentation, student response and timing to enable a student with a disability to take the test.

Accommodations do not lower or fundamentally alter the test standards, while modifications do fundamentally alter or lower the test standards.

Test validity assures that the test measures what it purports to measure -- a skill, knowledge or level of achievement. The test maker or producer (such as a state or school district) establishes accommodations and modifications.

IEP teams can't establish test validity, nor should they. Their job is to determine what a student needs in order to receive a free appropriate public education.

To assume the IEP's classroom accommodations are lso testing accommodations mixes apples and oranges. It may lead to invalid and meaningless test results.

Allowing any classroom accommodation on the statewide test, unless the state can show "evidence" an accommodation invalidates the score "interpretation," turns approved practice on its head. It sets up a cumbersome process, fraught with uncertainties.

What evidence will be sought? Will it be more burdensome than the rational basis the courts have long approved, in deference to professional decisions by educators?

2. States must provide an alternative assessment that's different from the standard testing assessment to any student with a learning disability who is disadvantaged by standardized testing because of his learning disability. The alternate assessment must count in the same manner as the standard testing, and students who take the alternate assessment should not be penalized in any way for participating in the alternate assessment.

This contradicts legal requirements.

It effectively removes any standard from standardized tests.

It usurps the state's right and responsibility to set standards for its students.

In sharp contrast, Section 504 specifies that in order to assure an equal opportunity, a school or state does not have to assure an equal outcome.

To require that any test a student takes counts the same as the standard test substitutes outcome for opportunity. It ignores that it is material covered by the test -- not the type of student taking the test -- that should determine how a test is counted.

3. An assessment system must not directly test a student's learning disability (for example, testing for spelling for dyslexic students) and make that component essential to passing the assessment. This misreads the law.

Section 504 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act specifically allow the opposite. Both laws state tests should be selected and administered so as not to test skills that reflect a student's disability directly, unless those are the very skills or knowledge the test purports to measure.

A test that measures reading, writing or math is allowed even if those skills are directly affected by the student's disability.

To follow this recommendation and not test these students in such skills as the "three R's" reverts to a time when they were exempt from the same high standards as their nondisabled peers.

Because they were not tested, they were not taught to high standards.

4. Assessment should not be used to make high stakes decisions for the disabled. Thus, a student with a disability should not be prevented from graduating, retained a year in school or shut out of advanced placement and honors classes on the basis of poor performance on a standardized testing assessment. This effectively discriminates against these students on the basis of disability.

It holds them to different and lower standards.

This is in stark contrast to the IDEA's mandate: to include these students in the general curriculum with its high standards and to assess them by the same tests as their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible. The state should not lower standards. Rather, the IEP team should monitor the appropriateness of this effort for the individual child, and provide FAPE to meet the child's needs.

5. States should establish comprehensive appeals processes so that parents and students can challenge any aspect of the testing system that they regard as unfair, including the disallowance of reasonable accommodations on the assessment. This is unfortunate.

There already is a plethora of options for comprehensive appeals' processes at the school, district, state and federal levels. Education reform does not need another layer of bureaucracy, paperwork and litigation.

Also, the term "reasonable accommodation" is misplaced here. A state is unlikely to disallow a reasonable accommodation. The question instead is whether the requested accommodation is reasonable or whether it is a modification (and should be disallowed).

6. Sates need to conduct research and studies regarding psychometric validity and reliability of the assessment system with regard to students with learning disabilities. This research should include studying the effect of the accommodations on the assessment. This advice is half-correct.

Yes, research regarding psychometric validity and reliability of the assessment system is appropriate. After all, tests need to be fair, valid and reliable. However, validity standards are not based on the types of students taking a test.

The courts and the Office for Civil Rights are clear on this: Tests cannot and should not be validated for any specific disability (or nationality or other minority) groups. To do so would invalidate the tests, as they would then measure something else.

7. Whether a student requires accommodations or an alternate assessment should be determined by the student's IEP or Section 504 team. These teams are composed of the student's teachers and parents and are the people most knowledgeable about what a student will require in order to participate in the testing system. Clarification is apt.

Yes, the IEP or Section 504 team should determine how the student will participate in the statewide testing program.

This determination should include the team's statement, based on the test producer's instructions, about whether the student's means of participation constitute an accommodation or a modification of the statewide test.

If it is a modification (a fundamental alteration or lowering of the standard), then the IEP needs to state that. Through this process, a parent has the information needed to make an informed decision for the child.

It is hoped that these concerns will generate meaningful dialogue of the issues involved among educators, parents, policymakers and other stakeholders.

* Miriam K. Freedman is an attorney representing school districts. She is currently on leave from the law firm of Stoneman, Chandler & Miller LLP in Boston.