Education Week - Moving Beyond the Mainstream - October 30, 2013 - S30

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE S28
It's hard, and some of these devices are
going to be certified on a case-by-case basis.
We have to test it and see how it works."
TAMARA REAVIS
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers
ment of Education has said that
states must offer their current
tests to students with disabilities
instead of the common-core field
tests, if those students use accommodations
or technology not
yet compatible with the new assessments.
However, if the tests
aren't vetted against the full
range of students with disabilities
during this tryout period,
problems could surface later when
the tests are rolled out in dozens of
states during the 2014-15 school
Real World Results
PROBLEM:
When this student entered 9th grade, he was
only able to read at a 6th-grade level. Bright
yet unengaged, he was at risk of dropping
even further behind his peers, and eventually
leaving high school without a diploma.
SOLUTION:
The student was enrolled in iLit, a tablet-based
reading intervention program. After using iLit
for 45 minutes a day, he read over 600,000
words in his iLit class alone. Every day, he
spent 15 minutes absorbed in a book of his
choice, selected from iLit's 600-title student
library. He took notes on his tablet as his
teacher guided his class through an on-level
anchor text, showing them the skills a good
reader uses to unlock meaning. By the end of
the year, the student was reading at a 10th
grade level, and was ready to leave iLit for
his on-level class.
6.6
Grade
Real iLit Results
Grade
10.3
Starting Reading Level
Ending Reading Level
Reading growth measured by Pearson's GRADE Assessment
year, Mr. Edyburn said. The Missouri
School Boards' Association
and the Missouri Council of
Administrators of Special Education
wrote a white paper in June
outlining their concerns with
what they believe to be inappropriately
restrictive conditions on
assistive technology. The paper
suggests that part of the problem
is that the tests are, in some
cases, tied too closely in format
to the paper-and-pencil tests
of old.
"Examining existing policies for
paper/pencil tests is not helpful
and may actually be detrimental
to shaping thinking about accommodations
for a digital assessment,"
the groups state. "The
disability community has been
told repeatedly that these new
online assessments will revolutionize
accessibility for students
with disabilities. To do any less is
a violation of trust."
The paper also expressed concerns
with requiring students
with disabilities to potentially
need to master devices that they
have had no experience with before.
Such a requirement would
be a waste of "precious" academic
time, the groups argued.
Challenges Ahead
At the Maryland School for
the Blind in Baltimore, students
use refreshable Braille displays
that convert computer text into
patterns of raised dots that
can be read by the fingertips,
said Joshua Irzyk, the assistant
principal
for the school's ex-
panded academics program. Students
also use screen readers on
computers.
But, in a foreshadowing of the
challenges likely to be posed by
the common-core assessments,
Mr. Irzyk said the school has
never been able to use the state's
computerized assessments. He
said the assistive devices that
students use rely on a video card
to convert the screen image into
speech or Braille, and the secure
test browsers lock out the video
card because of security concerns
that images of the questions
could be copied.
Students at the Maryland
3.7
Reading Gains
years
redefiningliteracy.com
S30 | EDUCATION WEEK OCTOBER 30, 2013
n
School for the Blind use paper
tests as a work-around, but such
tests may cost hundreds of dollars
and be hundreds of pages long, he
said. For example, a multiplechoice
geometry question could
be five pages long-one page for
the question and four pages to
display each of the four choices,
rendered in tactile graphics.
"We've looked at the PARCC
website," Mr. Irzyk said, "and I'm
certainly concerned about how a
blind student is going to access
some of these things." n
Coverage of the implementation of
the Common Core State Standards
and the common assessments is
supported in part by a grant from
the GE Foundation, at www.ge.com/
foundation. Education Week retains
sole editorial control over the content
of this coverage.
http://www.redefiningliteracy.com http://www.redefiningliteracy.com http://www.ge.com/foundation http://www.ge.com/foundation
Education Week - Moving Beyond the Mainstream - October 30, 2013

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