All students, including students with disabilities, participate in state accountability systems. Most students with disabilities participate in the regular assessment, with or without accommodations. Students with more significant cognitive disabilities participate in the alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS). A…

All students, including students with disabilities, participate in state accountability systems. Many students participate in the regular assessment, with or without accommodations, but some students may require participation in an alternate assessment to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Students with more significant cognitive disabilities…

All students, including students with disabilities, must be included in state accountability systems as required by law. In April 2007, federal regulations provided states the flexibility to offer another assessment option--an Alternate Assessment based on Modified Achievement Standards (AA-MAS) for some students with disabilities. The AA-MAS is…

Check & Connect was created in a five year period from 1990 to 1995. The original manual, entitled "Keeping Kids in School: Using Check & Connect for Dropout Prevention" and written by David Evelo, Mary Sinclair, Christine Hurley, Sandra Christenson, and Martha Thurlow, was published in 1996 (ED398701). This newly revised Check…

Federal regulations (U.S. Department of Education, 2007a) provide states with the flexibility to offer an alternate assessment based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAS). This assessment option is for a small group of students with disabilities who can make significant progress, but may not reach grade-level achievement within the…

Social validity data were collected for three educational interventions designed to increase the academic engaged time of elementary special education students: (1) a reading tutorial intervention, (2) a special education consultation intervention, and (3) a home-based consultation intervention. A total of 29 students, 14 parents, 21 teachers, and…

The use of accommodations for both instruction and assessment continues to be of great importance for students with disabilities. The purpose of this report is to provide an update on the state of the research on testing accommodations, as well as to identify promising areas of research likely to contribute to understanding of current and emerging…

This paper examines the results of a national study on the current status of state graduation policies and diploma options for youth with disabilities. It examines state policies in relation to their intended benefits as well as possible unintended consequences, and compared the findings with a similar study conducted by Johnson and Thurlow in…

States have taken a variety of approaches in the development of their alternate assessments and the policies and procedures that support them. This has resulted not only in alternate assessments that differ from state to state in their characteristics, but also in variations in the characteristics and percentages of students who are targeted for…

The present study was initiated to gather information about states' out-of-level testing practices. Specifically, we wanted to see whether states attempted to align out-of-level tests with grade of enrollment content standards, what processes are used to complete this task, and what psychometric information states offer as evidence of that…

The extent to which 148 teachers felt that their training programs prepared them to teach students with special needs was examined. A questionnaire was developed to ascertain whether teachers were able to carry out reponsibilities mandated through the passing of Public Law 94-142. Respondents were asked to rate their overall preparation and…

Instructional units on time and money were presented to 249 educable and trainable level mentally retarded children. Pretesting showed that Ss had a poorer understanding of time and money concepts than 229 nonretarded controls of the same MA. Significant performance increases from pretest to posttest resulted in the retardates' posttest scores…

How can teachers and administrators steer students toward graduation and away from dropping out? What determining factors contribute to a student's choice to drop out? Why is high school graduation such an important issue in society today? Effective prevention and intervention programs for the most vulnerable students are key to improving…

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) has for the past four years conducted research on large-scale assessment and instructional issues for English language learners (ELLs) with disabilities, but neither NCEO's research nor any other research study has yet described large-scale assessment experiences at the local school level for…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires the reporting of participation in assessments overall and by subgroup, including students with disabilities. As states and school districts strive to meet the goals for adequate yearly progress required by NCLB, the use of individual accommodations continues to be scrutinized for effectiveness,…