1997 Report Summary

The number of states revising their state assessments, participation, and/or accommodation policies has grown over the past five years. One of the most notable changes since the 1995 report is the decrease in the number of states with active participation policies (from 43 to 40), most likely due to the number of states that have suspended either their state assessment system or the participation policies they had in place. Unlike the 1993 and 1995 reports, this report shows that nearly every state that has a state assessment also has a set of accommodation guidelines; only a couple states have never had guidelines for their tests. However, because of the number of states that have had their assessments or policies suspended, the number of states with accommodation policies has only increased from 38 to 39 in the two years since the 1995 report.

States' work on participation and accommodations policies is apparent in the number of policies that have been revised from the time of the 1995 report — 34 new or revised policies on participation and 32 new or revised policies on accommodations, a large number of changes in the relatively short period of two years since 1995.

When examining participation policies, there were some similarities between this report and that of the 1995 report. One similarity is the continued reliance on the IEP team to help make participation decisions. Changes that have occurred over time include decreases in attention to the type of disability, and an increase in attention to curricular validity concerns or matching the assessment to the course content. Finally, additional testing options are becoming more widely available, with many states allowing partial participation in testing, and a growing number of states preparing to offer alternate assessments for students with very severe disabilities. This was occurring before the June, 1997 passage of amendments to IDEA, which require that states have alternate assessments in place by the year 2000. However, getting a good assessment of the number of states with alternate assessments is difficult. A recent NCEO survey (Erickson & Thurlow, 1997) showed 15 states reporting that they had developed or were developing alternate assessments. Yet, many of these states were really only thinking about or beginning to plan this development. In addition, states often interpret different things to be alternate assessments. For example, some states consider out-of-level testing to be an alternate test, something that is contrary to developing an inclusive accountability system (Elliot et al. 1996).

Accommodations policies, while they have undergone many changes since 1995, continue to have some common themes. Reading the test aloud is still both widely allowed and widely prohibited. Calculators were another accommodation both allowed and prohibited in 1995. In 1997 policies, they are more widely allowed (though sometimes with restrictions), 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.

The variability in policies became more apparent with the use of tables to summarize the policies. This occurred both when examining the variables categorized in the main tables and when examining the variability of accommodations states offer that fell into our "Other" category. These ranged from decreasing the amount a student could move during testing to offering modified pencils. States' creativity in developing accommodations intended to meet the needs of their students with disabilities is clearly demonstrated here.

The norm-referenced and criterion-referenced accommodations comparisons also yielded some interesting results. The fact that accommodations were more often available for criterion-referenced than for norm-referenced tests was an expected finding, but striking in how consistent it was. Additionally, it was curious that the number of accommodations available in norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests was the most similar in the category of setting accommodations. Perhaps this is the case because the setting of the assessment is less specified in standardization procedures, or it is seen as more changeable before any issues with standardization arise.

Overall, it is apparent that many states have been doing a great deal of work on the participation of students with disabilities in their assessments, and how the states can accommodate the students appropriately. It is encouraging to see that even before the legal mandates were put in place (e.g., IDEA), states had taken the initiative to work toward including all students in their assessments, and therefore, begin to hold schools accountable for the education of every student who attends.