Performance Assessment and Special Education: Practices and Prospects

Abstract

The field of educational assessment is changing rapidly and dramatically. At the center of change is performance assessment. The questions that frame this issue are: What is performance assessment? How is it currently used? What is its value to special education? What is its future? What should special educators do to best accommodate students with disabilities? FORCES INFLUENCING ASSESSMENT CHANGES After decades of widespread traditional standardized testing in the schools, this practice is finally changing. Several forces have converged to both create the need and provide the direction for change: educational reform, national standards, changing curricula, and outright rebellion against traditional testing. Educational Reform and Assessment Educational assessment was jolted out of a state of complacency by the success of Sputnik in 1957. Since then, testing has been used both to justify and to decry the status of education in America's schools. Following a decade of emphasis on science and mathematics so America's students would be prepared to meet the challenges of national security, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test was developed in 1968 to serve as a report card for the entire nation. In spite of the push for higher achievement in critical subject areas, the 1970s saw a decline in scores on SAT and ACT college admissions tests. The public's reaction and call for school curricula to "return to the basics" was not unexpected, nor were new tests to measure minimum competencies in at least 39 states. Following publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), America issued the call to restructure education for excellence. Many states raised educational standards and began to develop statewide testing programs, expanding existing minimum competency tests to include more grade levels and subject areas, and to use the test results as part of high school graduation requirements.