2001 Report Process Used to Review State Policies

In general, the same procedures were used for this analysis of states' written participation and accommodations policies as have been used in the past. Unlike other analyses of policies, which often ask an informed respondent to answer survey questions (e.g., Bond, Jones, & Olson 2001), NCEO examines publicly available written documents.

All 50 states were contacted via phone and email to update our files on participation and accommodation policies. We asked each state for copies of any policies they had revised since 1999. All 50 states responded to our request, with 45 states sending revisions and only four noting that they had not changed their participation and accommodations policies. We accepted new documents through September, 2001.

All of the tabled results of our analyses were sent back to the states for validation. State officials could indicate that there were no changes needed, ask for more information in order to decide whether the tables were accurate, or change the tables. If a state indicated the need for a change after reviewing the summary of tables, we requested written documentation before making the changes. We accepted new changes or revisions through October 31, 2001. A complete list of the state documents used to compile tables is in Appendix A.

We summarized the information in two sets of tables; one set for participation policies and the second set for accommodation policies. These tables are included in the Appendices in this report, thus enabling readers to make direct comparisons to the tables in the 1999 analysis. As always, presenting policy information in tables makes the information easily accessible, but it can sometimes obscure the underlying complexity of the individual state policies. For example, it is not apparent in any of the tables that the documents describing each state's policies ranged from a few pages to hundreds of pages. Some states specify accommodations for each individual test, while others provide general accommodation guidelines that apply to all tests administered in the state. Some of these complexities are apparent in some of the tables, but others are evident only by looking at the actual written documents.