Re: NCLB vs. IDEA in Missouri

["George K Cunningham" <gkc@louisville.edu>]

It would appear that the decision to not allow the test to be read to
students is a Missouri decision justified by the assertion that it might
not be allowable by the Feds.  Kentucky does allow these accommodation
and more.  At least this is what I was told by staff at our Department
of Education.  Part of the state reading tests requires students to read
passages and to provide constructed responses to essay type questions. 
Teachers not only serve as readers but as scribes, writing down the
student answers.  Principals are anxious to have as many poor readers as
possible get these accommodations because students perform much better
under these conditions.  Accommodations are provided to up to 14 percent
of students.  

NAEP has not permitted such accommodations but I think I read somewhere
that they are loosening their rules.  This caused quite a stir in 1998
when Kentucky along with North Carolina and Texas recorded large
increases in 4th grade reading scores on NAEP.  Kentucky went from 7
percent exempted to 14 percent exempted because their IEPs required
these accommodation.  The Kentucky Commissioner of Education, who was a
member of NAGB, bragged all over about the wonderful increases.  He was
not happy when the gains were called into question.  The gains in TX and
NC were also questioned, but there was less publicity about them.

It sounds like Missouri is taking a principled stand that you can't
call the response of students to questions they can't read, a reading
score.  Kentucky justifies it because only school level scores are
reported and not individual scores are used.  That would be the case for
Missouri NCLB scores.

By the way, Tennessee also allows the same generous accommodation and I
thought in the settlement of a lawsuit, California was permitting it.

George K. Cunningham
Professor, Ret.

>>> campbellp@mail.montclair.edu 04/22/06 9:04 AM >>>

On Apr 21, 2006, at 4:08 PM, George K Cunningham wrote:

>
> Are you saying that the accommodations specified in a students IEP
> cannot be used on the state accountability test used for NCLB?

The accommodations for reading or paraphrasing any portion of the  
communications arts portion of the state assessment (the Missouri  
Assessment Program, MAP) have been removed for an untold number of MO 

children with IEP's who normally have this accommodation for testing  
purposes. In short, if this accommodation is in their IEP, then it's  
OK for them to have classroom tests read or paraphrased but not OK to 

have the state assessment read or paraphrased.

> The
> reason I ask is that in a briefing I got from staff in the  
> Department of
> Education in Kentucky, I was told that such accommodations could be
> used.  In other words, is this a Missouri rule or a national rule?

I don't know, George. My guess is that if it's OK in Kentucky, then  
it must be a MO thing. However, please consider the following from a  
MO DESE memo to districts:

- The decision to invalidate the MAP Communication Arts assessment,  
if oral reading is used as an accommodation, was based on national  
and state discussions and examination of MAP data.

- The MAP Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for DESE advised at its  
February 2004 meeting that the practice of reading the Communication  
Arts assessment to students with disabilities to generate a reading  
score should be discontinued.

  - It would be difficult to gain approval for Missouri's assessment 

program from the United States Department of Education under No Child 

Left Behind in the fall of 2005, as scores generated from reading the 

Communication Arts assessment would not be considered valid.

- The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other  
recognized measures of student achievement do not allow reading as an 

accommodation on Reading/Communication Arts assessments.

source - http://dese.mo.gov/divspeced/Compliance/PDF/MAP-Changes.pdf 

 From this information, it would be difficult to understand how some  
states can allow the reading accommodation and others can't. If  
Kentucky allows it, how did they get ED to buy in? How did they skirt 

the NAEP comparison, i.e., NAEP doesn't do it, so why should we? And, 

most of all, how did Kentucky get around the observation that oral  
reading of a comprehension passage meant that students were having  
their listening skills tested, not their reading skills? This latter  
question has lots of people scratching their heads. I would argue  
that reading comprehension passages are more about comprehension and  
less about reading. If we already know from students' IEP's that they 

cannot read at grade level, then why subject them to a grade level  
test? At least with the accommodation, the student runs a better  
chance of being able to answer the questions, i.e., to have their  
comprehension skills assessed, not their reading skills. Again, if we 

already know their reading skills are not at grade level, do we  
really need a state test to tell us what we already know?

Peter Campbell