Following hard on the heels of Fordham’s own report, Evaluating the Content and Quality of Next Generation Assessments, the Center for American Progress looks at the exams offered by the PARCC and Smarter Balanced (SBAC) testing consortia and largely likes what it sees for students with special challenges.
It’s a larger population than many perhaps realize. English language learners (4.4 million) and students with disabilities (6.4 million) constitute more than 20 percent of American school enrollment. “Given these numbers, it is critical that students with disabilities and English language learners have the same opportunities as their peers to demonstrate their knowledge and skills and receive appropriate supports to meet their needs,” the report notes.
Testing “accommodations” have typically meant extra time, questions read out loud or translated into native languages, and so on. While PARCC and SBAC “improve on previous state tests in terms of quality, rigor, and alignment” (Fordham’s report reached the same overarching conclusion) they also represent a significant advance in “universal design”—a principle that considers the user with the greatest physical and cognitive need and makes it a “feature,” not a “fix.” Consider the authors’ example of sidewalk “curb cuts.” Designed to make sidewalks wheelchair accessible, they ended up used by far greater numbers of non-disabled people, such as cyclists and mothers pushing strollers. That’s clear enough (and clever), but universal design principles are less obvious for tests. They include simple, clear, and intuitive instructions; precisely defined test items and tasks; and “accessible, nonbiased items” that are “sensitive to disability and students’ various cultural experiences.” “When assessment designers have the expectation that tests should be taken by all students, they create exams with every student in mind,” the report notes. Among the “features, not fixes” lauded by CAP for either PARCC, SBAC, or both: an item-specific, grade-appropriate glossary; translated test directions in nineteen languages; and digital notepads, calculators, and highlighters. The list of embedded accommodations is long, but the benefit of these design features is simple. It means that “students with disabilities and English language learners are less likely to take exams in a separate room or require the support of an aide, reducing the stigma around accommodations.” It also means that the tests are more likely to measure mastery of content and skills—not the ability to access the test itself. (For a comparison of the accommodations features for PARCC and SBAC, see page 44 of this HumRRO report.)
The PARCC and SBAC tests are a “major step forward for all learners,” the authors note, but they are not perfect. The majority of the forty-two current Common Core states were initially poised to administer one or the other; but, as the authors drily note, the two testing consortia have “paid a price during legislative battles.” Thus, states that have adopted one or the other “should continue to implement PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments for their quality, rigor, and benefits for students with disabilities and English language learners.” But states that have fallen out of the consortia should take advantage of PARCC’s “flexible approach that allows states to use specific PARCC content when building their own tests.” SBAC materials are similarly available with approval by the consortium’s governing members. Using items á la carte would mean more “high-quality, universally designed items” in states’ homegrown assessments, the report concludes. A fine idea.
SOURCE: Samantha Batel and Scott Sargrad, “Better Tests, Fewer Barriers: Advances in Accessibility through PARCC and Smarter Balanced,” Center for Education Progress (February 2016).
