BRT News

Documenting Reading Achievement and Growth for Students Taking Alternate Assessments. Students with disabilities have been included in state accountability systems for more than a decade; however, only in the past few years have alternate assessments of alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) become stable enough to allow examination of these students’ achievement growth. Using data from Oregon’s AA-AAS in Reading during the period 2008–2009 to 2010–2011, we examined the achievement growth for a sample of 1,061 elementary students using two growth models:…
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Patterns of Statewide Test Participation for Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities. Students with significant cognitive disabilities are eligible to participate in two statewide testing options for accountability: alternate assessments or general assessments with appropriate accommodations. Participation guidelines are generally quite vague, leading to students “switching” test participation between years. In this study, we tracked test participation for two cohorts of students with a documented disability over 3 years. Results suggested approximately 25% of students who initially took the alternate assessment…
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Achievement Gaps for Students with Disabilities: Stable, Widening, or Narrowing on a State-wide Reading Comprehension Test. Reading comprehension growth trajectories from 3rd to 7th grade were estimated for 99,919 students on a state reading comprehension assessment. We examined whether differences between students in general education (GE) and groups of students identified as exceptional learners were best characterized as stable, widening, or narrowing. The groups included students with disabilities (SWD) from 8 exceptionality groups and 2 groups of academically gifted students…
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