Alternate Assessment Formats for Progress Monitoring Students With Intellectual Disabilities and Below Average IQ: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

As part of standards-based reforms, there is increasing emphasis on ensuring that students with moderate intellectual disabilities (ID), including students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), learn to read. There is also converging evidence that explicit teaching of letter sounds, phonics, and sight words is effective for this population, but that students’ responsiveness varies. A critical part of individualizing reading instruction for students with disabilities is the reliable assessment of progress and mastery of reading skills. However, assessment of many students with ID and students with ASD is challenging because of attention, behavioral, and communication issues related to testing situation; therefore, obtaining consistent results often proves to be a difficult task. We hypothesized that alternate assessment presentation formats, as a testing accommodation, would improve the reliability, validity, and consistency of assessment performance. In this study, three different presentation formats—word lists, flash cards, and PowerPoint presentation—were used when administering proximal, curriculum-based reading assessments to determine whether a particular format increased student engagement, reduced the need for prompts, and increased accuracy of identifying known items on the test. While statistical analyses did not support the hypothesis of a format by student effect, visual analysis of the data did suggest that the number of prompts required varied by student as a function of assessment format. Most noteworthy, assessment reliability, estimated with generalizability theory, indicated that reliability increased as a function of format by student.

Achievement Monitoring Technology Of Mentally Retarded Schoolchildren On The Touch Screen

“…A number of foreign studies of recent years have been devoted to the problems of educational and administrative monitoring of educational achievements of students with cognitive disorders (Farley et al, 2016;Hill & Lemons, 2015;Jones et al, 2018;Kearns et al, 2015). "Formative assessment" technologies are used for applying in current educational process in order to identify the zone of "proximal development", to monitor the progress of students for short periods and to promptly adjust programs for working with them.…”

Early Reading Outcomes in Response to a Comprehensive Reading Curriculum for Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability

“…Each week, the students took the assessment administered by the same research assistant so the student would be familiar with the examiner. Words were presented in random order one at a time on paper flashcards (Brent) or the iPad (Frank) based on student performance (Jones et al, 2019). Students were told to read the words as they appeared.…”

A Brief Historic Review of Special Education for Students with Extensive Support Needs in the US, Hawai’i, and Japan

“…One such act, signed into law in 2002 by George W. Bush was the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which led to an increase in school accountability and statewide testing. This push for accountability changed general education as well as special education, spawning the development of alternate assessments and even standards for students with ESN, although the effectiveness of these assessments is debated (Jones et al, 2019). NCLB along with the subsequent reauthorizations of IDEA inspired a paradigm shift where many educators began to presume the competence of students with disabilities, even those with ESN, engaging in what is known as the least dangerous assumption (Jorgenson, 2005).…”