2001 Report Summary

There have been many changes in state participation and accommodation policies as states continue to work toward increased participation and performance of students with disabilities on state and district assessments. The IEP team continues to play a key role in the participation and accommodation decision-making process, with an increase in the role of parents in the process. Decisions are now based more on an individual student's ability to participate in an assessment than on a student's disability category or placement. Emotional anxiety is a new category added this year, with eight states now basing participation decisions at least partially on this criterion.

States are grappling with the pros and cons of out-of-level testing. The practice of assessing students using a lower-level version of a test is controversial, with questions arising about unintended instructional consequences versus "accurately" measuring performance and avoiding student frustration (Minnema, Thurlow, Bielinski, & Scott, 2000). All states now have alternate assessments available for students, with a few states developing multiple alternate assessments.

In general, states continue to increase the number of accommodations documented within their policies, while at the same time considering the implications of accommodations that are deemed to invalidate test results. This has resulted in more detailed specifications about which accommodations can be reported. These details are evident for all of the categories of accommodations, a characteristic that makes it more and more difficult to provide simple summaries of accommodation policies.

For the first time in our analyses of participation and accommodation policies, there has been enough information on alternate assessments to begin to characterize the information that is available. Most states have placed information online. The information that was available for our analyses indicated that there are only five states that have no information at all about their alternate assessments on their state education agency Web sites. Most states have focused their information on the policies, standards, and instructions for administration. Future reports will analyze these policies in greater depth.

The 2001 analysis of participation and accommodations policies provides answers to the five questions noted at the beginning of this report.

1. The policies in all states except five reflect the three basic participation options of general assessment without accommodations, general assessment with accommodations, and alternate assessment. In addition, a number of states have additional options in the form of partial participation, more than one alternate assessment, and out-of-level testing.

2. Qualitatively, the 2001 policies are more detailed than previous policies. Generally these details reflect greater specification of the conditions under which a specific policy applies.

3. Five states now have accommodations policies that indicate assessment accommodations can be used by any student in the state-not just those on IEPs, 504 plans, or who have limited English proficiency. A few additional states make certain accommodation categories available to all students, and several additional states indicate that any student with a temporary disability (one not requiring an IEP or a 504 plan) has access to accommodations.

4. Many states specifically indicate when the use of a specific accommodation will result in the score from the assessment not being included in aggregations. It is still unclear whether all fo the states that may not aggregate certain scores have indicated this in their accommodation policies.

5. The most controversial accommodations continue to be those identified previously-read aloud, calculator, and scribe. All of these have been more carefully defined by the conditions under which they are allowed or aggregated more explicitly stated in the 2001 policies.

It is clear from this analysis that state policies continue to evolve. Dramatic changes from the previous analysis are not as evident as they were in the early days of examining participation and accommodations policies. Instead the changes are slower and represent greater understanding of the details of policies.