NAEP Plan for Students With Disabilities Criticized

Washington

Representatives of education organizations who appeared at a Nov. 9 public hearing here in the nation’s capital agreed with the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress that the “nation’s report card” should be as inclusive as possible of English-language learners and students with disabilities. They didn’t agree, though, with all of the board’s proposals for how to do that.

Oscar Troncoso, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, and Lawrence Feinberg, a NAGB staff member, heard three hours of testimony on the board’s proposals for how to bring more uniformity and coherence to policies for testing ELLs and students with disabilities, an issue the board has been grappling with for a decade . The board is concerned that testing accommodations and exclusion rates for those two groups of students vary widely among states and school districts, possibly jeopardizing the fairness and validity of comparisons made with NAEP data. The board plans to vote on policies addressing the issue at its March meeting.

Particularly controversial at the hearing was the board’s proposal that students with disabilities be permitted to receive only accommodations approved by NAGB and not all of those that may appear in their individual...