TestTaking-Generic092412 (Updated with boosted annotate from a fellow member of the state Advisory Commission on Special Instruction)

U.Due south. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is proposing to eliminate an alternative test for students with disabilities, arguing it undercuts their bookish potential. The value of the test has divided the education and disability rights communities, with some advocates agreeing with Duncan and others proverb the test accurately captures what students accept learned.

Critics of California's version, the California Modified Cess, take charged that some districts have pushed administering the test to many more students with disabilities than the federal government had intended. Because students with disabilities perform far ameliorate on the modified exam than on the California Standards Tests, the overall touch has been to artificially inflate districts' and schools' scores on the Academic Functioning Index, the principal measure of student performance, concluded Doug McRae, a retired standardized testing executive who analyzed annual API results in a commentary last yr for EdSource Today.

California is one of 16 states that have created a modified cess aligned with land standards. If Duncan's proposal is adopted, next spring will be the last year that the state can administer its modified assessment. Other states already have agreed not to offer it, every bit a status for receiving a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law, according to Education Week. Duncan published his proposal last week in the Federal Register.

Duncan had pledged two years agone to exercise away with the test, so the annunciation came as no surprise, said Deb Sigman, deputy superintendent of public didactics. The land had intended to offer students who had taken the modified assessments the same Common Core tests in math and English linguistic communication arts that all students will take, starting in 2014-15. California is among the states offer the Smarter Balanced version of the Common Cadre tests. Every bit a computer adaptive test, it volition tailor questions to each pupil, based on answers to previous questions. Every bit a result, information technology promises to give a more precise measure of what students accept learned, she said. Sigman is on the executive committee of the multi-state Smarter Counterbalanced consortium.

Table 1: Students taking CMA by year & grade span

Students taking the California Modified Assessment by year and grade bridge. Compiled by Doug McRae (click to enlarge).

Yet, Alice Parker, a Sacramento-based special instruction consultant and former state assistant superintendent and managing director of special education, said an outright emptying of a modified cess could exist harmful. For some students with disabilities, the test "closely aligned with what students were striving to larn." Having these students take a standard test without accommodations was detrimental; the results didn't accurately reflect the progress that many had made, she said.

At the same fourth dimension, Parker agreed with McRae that districts had given the test to too many students, with the equal impairment of giving "an inflated expect at what students are learning." The loftier scores for many students "created a false epitome of capability" that students discovered only when they enrolled in community colleges and universities.

Duncan's view, shared past some advocates for the disabled, including Easter Seals and the National Middle for Learning Disabilities, is that the modified assessment sells students short and, he said in a statement, "prevents these students from reaching their full potential, and prevents our country from benefiting from that potential."

Maureen Burness, a retired director of regional special education programs and a fellow member of the state'south Advisory Commission on Special Education, agrees. She wrote in an email "that WITH appropriate modifications in instruction and assessments, this could be the push from which most students with disabilities could benefit." Since most special educational activity students take learning or specific language impairments, "nigh should be able to learn to standards and be assessed as such."

Since 2005, the federal Department of Education permitted states to create modified tests for special education students nether the so-called "2 per centum rule." The tests were to be given to upwardly to 2 percent of students in a district – or about 20 pct of students with disabilities. In California, simply those students with disabilities who had scored beneath basic or far below basic on the California Standards Tests the year before were eligible for the modified assessment.

But as the California Modified Assessment was phased in, districts quickly expanded its employ. Last year, 46 percent of students with disabilities in the state took the assessment, with over l percent in centre school. In San Bernardino, Fresno and Santa Ana unified districts and in Sweetwater High School District, more than than 70 percent of students with disabilities took it. By McRae'south calculations, 39 percent of the gain in statewide API scores in elementary school and 27 pct of middle school gains over the past v years were attributable to the overuse of the exam.

McRae, in an email, said that the modified assessment serves a valid purpose and he would favor creating a version aligned to the Mutual Core standards and restricted to xx pct of students with disabilities. In calculating API scores, the results on a modified assessment should exist discounted to have into account an easier test, which California did non exercise, he wrote.

California and other states also offer a separate examination for the 1 pct of students with the most severe cerebral disabilities. That test, the California Alternative Performance Assessment or CAPA, was non affected by Duncan'due south proposal.

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