New Assessment Aligning Students with Severe Disabilities to Common Core

There is new Common Core assessment claiming to be “rigorous” for students with severe cognitive disabilities. Do students with severe disabilities need rigor?

The assessment is being likened to a “journey” like a beautiful trip.

Or, is it a trip to nowhere?

It touts accountability, but I see no safety net for students if they fail. And the assessment itself, while showy, is unproven and seems bizarrely out-of-touch.

It is Online and Ongoing Common Core

It is Common Core computer-driven assessment at basic levels.

Also, no more than 1 percent of students, about 10 percent of all students with disabilities, will be eligible to take the alternative assessments. All other students with disabilities must master grade-level academics and will have to take the general assessment—Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARC) or Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC).

Yet, students with severe cognitive disabilities are supposed to have “access to grade-level content” with Common Core.

With the new assessment, Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM) and the National Center and State Collaborative (NCSC) promise they’ve got everyone covered.

How Do Students With Severe Disabilities Learn?

I’m thinking of the students I worked with who had severe disabilities. Goals involved establishing eye contact, speech and language, physical therapy and learning day-to-day skills, like how to chew solid food and use the toilet.

One of my students had a language board, created by a brilliant teacher who worked in the classroom next door. This student communicated well, pointing to the words on the board.

I am trying to envision instructionally embedded assessment—what they call the testing. It is supposed to help students with vision issues too.

I don’t want to slam augmentative communication. Some kinds of technology can be helpful for students with severe disabilities.

But assessment to bring students to Common Core skills, standards questionable to begin with, seems strange.

It’s a Miracle! Well, No. Not Really. But it Sounds Like It

This Common Core assessment is NOT about devising a plan that celebrates children and their differences. The words Individual Educational Plan don’t jump out at me.

But it makes big promises to get students career and college ready.

The DLM system will integrate assessment with instruction during the year, providing a year-end assessment, the DLM system maps student learning aligned with college and career readiness standards in English language arts and mathematics.

There’s a lot of data collection too. But it doesn’t seem to be useful data.

Likewise, the NCSC says its goal is to ensure that students with the most significant cognitive disabilities achieve increasingly higher academic outcomes and leave high school ready for post-secondary options.

If you visit both these sites, you will see adults with students and they are pointing to the computer screen. Here is a promotion video.

For today’s education reformers, the computer is the great equalizer. Call it digital. Call it personalized…competency-based…e-learning…virtual…or just call it sitting at a desk online on the computer.

With this new assessment parents are led to believe their student’s problems are solved!

What the Hell are Linkage Levels? 

Like Common Core, in general, this alternative assessment for students with severe disabilities has all kinds of strange language. I am always reminded of English teachers who, while teaching writing, said “simplify, simplify, simplify.” You will not find that here.

Terms are odd. Instead of simply calling goals, goals, they use the term “essential elements.”

Here is a quote from the DLM manual.

The least complex of the linkage levels is called the Initial Precursor. Testlets developed at the Initial Precursor level often reflect foundational nodes in the learning map, which skills and understandings necessary for learning subsequent academic content (e.g., “focus attention”).

One of my past students needed to focus. My goal was “Jane will reach eye contact 3 out of 5 times upon request to look at me.” I would positively reinforce Jane with cereal bits when she looked me in the eyes. Later when we weren’t working on this skill, I sought to catch her looking at me and interacting socially. I rewarded her with lots of praise when those occasions occurred.

Being able to finally break through and see a non-communicative student suddenly smile at you is the greatest achievement in the world! How, I wonder, does this work digitally?

But to answer my own question about the vocabulary, they do tell us that Linkage levels are identified by locating the node or nodes in the learning map that most closely match the EE. Nodes specify individual skills and understanding that were identified in the research in mathematics and English language arts.  

I am a hypochondriac, so all this node talk makes me rather uncomfortable.

Just know that behind the confusing language there is an online multiple choice test waiting to happen.

How Can Standards Be the Same But Different?

This new assessment has led to a NCSC report called “Standards That are the ‘Same But Different’” and this sounds confusing. What I think it means is, students work online doing different skills but in the end everyone will arrive at the same Common Core promise land where differences will no longer exist.

This is a tall order. I think they should be careful with such predictions, because it will take just one wealthy parent with a good attorney who is going to realize these tests are not making any difference in their child’s life.

How many school districts have spent thousands, even millions on hardware, in general, only to watch test scores remain stagnant?

Despite the hype, there is no proof anywhere that technology by any of the names and especially through the use of assessment will make everyone, including students with the most severe disabilities, college ready.

Assessment is not Instruction

Assessment as they describe it, will not magically transform a child to be college ready either.

What education reformers do not understand, is that assessment is simply a tool. This assessment appears to be ongoing testing following rote skill presentation in English language arts and mathematics. But assessment is still the focus.

Assessment evaluates what a child learns, sometimes, but it is not the teaching part of education.

Serious questions arise when you attempt to blend instruction with testing so quickly. It is very much like rote learning.

Research is Non-existent so Make Least Dangerous Assumptions?

One gets the feeling DLM and NCSC understand their own product is unproven.

If you look for research that shows that online assessment works and students with serious disabilities will learn best this way you will find none.

So the promotors of this assessment point to an 1984 article in Behavioral Disorders where they state: The evidence emerged from educators who adhered to the least dangerous assumption, which…holds that in the absence of conclusive data, educational decisions ought to be based on assumptions which, if incorrect, will have the least dangerous effect on the likelihood that students will be able to function independently as adults.

Dismissing functional programs of instruction for students with serious disabilities and promoting unproven online assessment is nothing short of alarming.

There is research about how to work with students who have serious disabilities. We have known for years, for example, that positive behavioral modification works well with students who have severe disabilities including autism.

While computers hold promise for students with disabilities, especially in communication, they are not a be-all, end-all solution. I don’t believe, and many agree, that they will ever be able to take over the job of a quality special education teacher.

Of Course, It Is Costly

Education Week is reporting that DLM and NCSC got $67 million in federal funds for college-and career-ready standards for those students who “are not expected to master grade-level material.” I suppose that’s chump change compared to the $360 million the federal government spent for PARCC and SBAC.

But it is concerning that there is no talk about how this is going to be included on an Individual Educational Plan where parents should get to decide whether their child will be a part of this or any other assessment.

Parents, teachers and citizens in this country should be raising serious questions about all the tax dollars going to such online ventures that are not vetted properly and which seem ill-conceived.

Children should not be led on a journey to nowhere.

References

Samuels, Christina A. “Alternative Tests Aligned With Common Core Find Niche in Special Ed.” Education Week. April 27, 2016.

Wells-Moreaux, S.,  & Karvonen, M. 2015. “Accessibility Manual for the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternative Assessment, 2015-2016.” Laurence, KS: The University of Kansas Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation.

“AA-AAS Standards That Are the ‘Same but Different.’” National Center and State Collaborative. June 2015.