Progress has been made one year into a five-year grant awarded in 2010 to the University of Kansas Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation (CETE) by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. The $22 million grant — the largest in KU history — was awarded to fund development and evaluation of a new generation of alternate assessments for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities — the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment System (DLM). Thirteen states are participating in the project: Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Set for large-scale use during the 2014–2015 school year, the DLM alternate assessment system will let students with significant cognitive disabilities show what they know in ways that traditional multiple-choice tests cannot and is designed to more validly measure what students with significant cognitive disabilities know and can do. The assessment system is structured around a learning map, which models many potential pathways students may take on their path to gaining academic content. The map is populated by a connected network of thousands of sequenced learning targets, or skills, that students need to learn by the end of high school. It is dynamic because it selects test items and tasks for a student based on that student's previous responses. It is a connected network because skills build upon other skills, and students need to demonstrate prerequisite knowledge and ability before advancing from one skill to another.
CETE is ahead of schedule, having developed seven grade levels of the learning map in the first year of the grant period. As part of the map's development, educators from across the country examined the map during a two-day content review in September and gave it overwhelming praise.
"The learning map itself is very helpful for teachers in learning alternative routes for students to end up at the same destination," said Terri Portice of Michigan. The map will undergo two more reviews by education experts in the fields of special education and cognitive psychology in 2012 and then be validated through the extensive collection of student data in the 13 participating states.
The next stage of DLM work, development of instructionally relevant item types that go beyond traditional multiple-choice items, has already begun. Historically, tests have been designed to measure skills efficiently, but in the face of high-stakes accountability systems, many teachers have begun teaching to tests. DLM has been working with master teachers to design test items that model good instructional activities so that if teachers do teach to the test, the tests will be worth teaching to. Prototypes of these new item types are under development and will be tried out with students and presented to teachers for feedback over the next few months.
DLM is a comprehensive assessment system grounded in research evidence and emerging theory about assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities. It breaks new ground in universal design for assessment, learning map development, instructionally embedded assessment, and technology-based, instructionally relevant item types.
For more than 30 years, CETE has partnered with the Kansas State Department of Education to deliver a variety of assessment services under the Kansas State Assessment Program, the comprehensive assessment system Kansas schools use to determine whether a student learns the intended curriculum. CETE also offers online training resources, practice tests, and tutorials to help prepare students and educators for the Kansas assessments.
CETE leads the DLM-AAS Consortium, a group of 13 states that was awarded a $22 million grant to develop the assessment system from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs in 2010. Hyun-jeong Cho will present "Understanding alternate assessment misassignment and how to prevent it," which examines when students are not correctly identified for alternative assessments and provides solutions to ensure academically challenging education for students with disabilities. Sookyung Shin is also participating in the panel discussion, "In their own voices: successes, challenges of raising children with severe disabilities," in which parents from five different countries who have immigrated to the United States share stories of their journeys with their children who have severe and intensive needs.
Researchers at the University of Kansas have received a $22 million grant to develop a new assessment system for special education students in 11 states.
The grant from the U.S. Department of Education will support development of the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment System, led by Neal Kingston, a faculty member in the Department of Psychology and Research in Education and director of KU's Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation. It is the largest grant in KU history.
The new system will rely on assessment that is built into the learning process, rather than on an annual exam. Teachers can determine throughout the year how each student is learning by using a "learning map," which details relationships among thousands of skills students develop throughout their education.
"When you have really good diagnostic information that supports the educational process, you can address needs and remediate immediately," Kingston said.
State departments of education in Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin plan to use the program beginning in the 2014-15 school year.
Kingston said the new assessment model eventually could be used for all students.
In addition to the 11 participating states and the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation, the Dynamic Learning Maps consortium includes faculty from several other departments and research centers within KU, including the Beach Center on Disability, Center for Research on Learning, Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis and Department of Special Education. Key external partners include AbleLink Technologies, the Arc, the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Edvantia.