Some students can take the regular assessment without accommodations, some can take the regular assessment with accommodations that retain task comparability, some must have an alternate assessment, and some require accommodations so great the measure is not comparable to the measures used in general education. In setting criteria, state and local agencies are struggling with how broadly to define the pool of students who will be administered alternate assessments. Over-identification of students with disabilities for alternate assessment could have a number of negative effects. First, state and local agencies are increasingly using their large scale measures as hurdles that must be crossed for promotion or graduation. Thus students removed to the alternate assessment might lose opportunities they otherwise might have if they take the general assessment.
Costs can be significant.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, having a large percentage of students with disabilities in the alternate assessment might lead to less accountability for their educational progress, since IDEA requires testing and reporting for all students, but is silent regarding the inclusion of results for students with disabilities in accountability indices leading to school accreditation, rewards and sanctions. The decision of who will take the alternate assessment has major implications for decisions on what to assess, how to assess and how information gathered from this assessment is to be used. The policies and guidelines from the twelve states were reviewed to ascertain criteria being used. Information was initially gathered from state responses to the NCEO survey followed by review of information from those states that have formally adopted policies, and by survey of those states in the draft stage of policy development. The twelve states included were Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.