Leadership magazine March/April 2018 V47 No. 4 | Page 27

Limitations of assessment
Alternate assessment is required by federal and state legislation for all students in the United States , regardless of the nature or severity of their disability . Including students with disabilities in alternate assessments has provided a means for states to track progress and proficiency of those students whose “ IEP team determines cannot participate in state assessments … even with appropriate accommodations ” ( 34 / CFR 200.6a ).
State assessments and Adequate Yearly Progress ( AYP ) data provided critical information to districts that informed student achievement overall and by subgroups within proficiency levels in core areas . However , few state alternate assessments are able to inform or guide instruction . In this respect , alternate assessment has some inherent limitations .
State alternate assessments are summative in that they assess the state alternate assessment blueprint once yearly to show what students know and are able to do after instruction . Alternate assessment does not report progress by standard or identify need areas for student learning . It does not guide instructional decision making , but rather tests the alternate assessment blueprint showing proficiency across core areas of English language arts ( ELA ), math and science at selected grade levels , and at best includes progress on broad strand areas .
Description of the SANDI
The SANDI assessment was developed for students with significant cognitive disabilities , identified as 1 percent of the students who are administered alternate assessments as part of each state ’ s annual assessment program ( U . S . Department of Education , 2005 ). The first edition of the SANDI was aligned with the California Alternate Performance Assessment ( CAPA ) blueprint and field tested by hundreds of teachers in California who assisted with item development through specific feedback and critique .
The second edition ( 2009 ) of the SANDI was aligned with the New York State Alternate Assessment blueprint and pilot tested for two years by teachers in New York City
Implementation of the SANDI gave special education teachers fair and reliable data on the progress their students
were making .
Department of Education District 75 . During this time , the SANDI was revised and developed into an electronic assessment utilizing online access through iPads and computers .
The third edition of the SANDI was developed in 2010 to reflect grade-level content and align with Common Core State Standards ( CCSS ) and continued to incorporate revisions based on feedback from teachers , administrators , content experts , and other instructional support specialists .
The alignment process considered the alignment criteria from the Links for Academic Learning ( LAL ) a procedure to determine the degree of alignment of alternate assessments to alternate achievement standards ( Flowers , Wakeman and Browder , 2009 ). The SANDI has continued to be organized into content area sections including reading / language arts , communication , writing and math .
Early results for RCOE
Consistent use of the SANDI across RCOE ’ s 23 districts demonstrated student achievement for students with disabilities on state alternate assessments . The CAPA Adequate Yearly Progress data for RCOE , from 2005-2013 , reflects continuous growth in student achievement in both ELA and math .
Growth in CAPA percent proficient during this nine-year period for RCOE increased from 55 percent to 92 percent in ELA and from 42 percent to 82 percent proficient in math . In a nine-year comparison between RCOE and the state CAPA proficiency , RCOE outperformed the California average rates in ELA by 37 percent , compared to a state proficiency increase of 19 percent . In math , RCOE ’ s proficiency rate change was 40 percent as compared to the state average of 15 percent .
This growth was due in large part to districtwide systematic implementation of the SANDI , and the capability to give special education teachers fair and reliable data on the progress their students were making .
SANDI scales up nationally
As of 2017 , the SANDI has been administered to more than 30,000 students with intellectual disabilities nationally , capturing student data through meaningful summative and formative assessment and allowing access to standards-based , data-driven instruction . The SANDI , updated prior to the IEP , reports out all present levels of performance , shows student progress since the previous IEP , and aligns instructional need areas to the Common Core State Standards . New IEP goals are identified by prioritizing student need areas and clearly supporting access to standards-based instruction .
The SANDI Standards Reports further inform the selection and implementation of standards-based instruction using evidencebased practices to meet the needs of students with intellectual disabilities . District leadership can now , often for the first time ever , view individual student progress , and track student data by classroom , by school site and districtwide .
Validity and reliability
The results of a validity and reliability study , completed in May by Hanover Research , evaluated the efficacy of the SANDI as a fully developed research-based comprehensive student assessment system . The SANDI third edition was tested for its psychometric properties to offer teachers , parents , school districts and other shareholders an evidence-based method for evaluating student academic skill levels on the CCSS .
The data was tested for validity and reliability across the United States using a large number of students for the purpose of giving
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