Doug McRae

California'due south 2022 Academic Operation Alphabetize (API) results, released today, in general show pocket-sized but steady gains similar to the last four years. Just a deeper await at the results shows non just inflation contributing to the gains but also a substantial policy shift toward lower expectations for special instruction students in California.

The API trend data inflation is due to the introduction of a new exam for special education students over the past 5 years: the California Modified Assessments, or CMAs. These tests were introduced to give selected students greater "access" to the statewide testing organization, by making tests easier than the regular California Standards Tests (CSTs) given to all other students. When the CMAs were approved in 2007, the program was that roughly 2 per centum of total enrollment (or about 20 percent of special pedagogy enrollment) would qualify to take CMAs instead of CSTs. A major criterion for taking a CMA rather than a CST was that a special education student had to score Far Below Basic or Beneath Basic on a CST the previous year; the decision whether a educatee should have a CMA or a CST was left to each pupil's Individual Instruction Program (IEP) team.

Over fourth dimension, yet, the implementation of the CMA program has resulted in almost 5 percentage of total enrollment (or close to 50 percent of special teaching enrollment) taking the easier CMAs. In improver, CMA scores count the same as CST scores for API calculations, even though the state Department of Education acknowledges that the CMA is an easier examination. The result has been to inflate reporting of API tendency data over the past few years, and more than importantly to crusade a subtle but substantial lowering of academic standards that we expect for our students with disabilities in California.

Alice Parker, a Sacramento-based national consultant on special education issues, comments "California has more than 600,000 students identified for one of 13 disability categories. Of that number, more than 70 percentage are students in disability categories who accept boilerplate or above boilerplate intellectual capabilities, such as a specific learning inability or an emotional disability or an orthopedic impairment. These students should exist held to high academic standards and should be tested as whatever other educatee with average or above boilerplate intellectual ability. To assign these students to easier tests or to opt these students out of an accountability arrangement based on high expectations does major harm to each and every student capable of achieving the higher standards." Indeed, students who receive "higher" scores due to easier tests will likely not receive the appropriate instruction needed to maximize their learning capabilities.

To dig deeper into this, allow'southward first expect at the data from our statewide testing system for the time menstruation since CMAs were initiated, and and so talk about the policy shift in standards for California special instruction students.

The data

Table 1: Students taking CMA by year & grade span

Table 1: Students taking CMA by twelvemonth & grade bridge (click to enlarge)

First, we tin can look at the CMA participation rates from 2008 through 2012 (come across Tables ane, ii, and 3). For these data, nosotros encounter the following:

  • CMA usage has increased quickly from 40,000 students when initially introduced for grades 3-5 in 2008 to almost 210,000 students for grades 3-11 in 2012.
  • For 2012, these data interpret into four.nine percent of total enrollment taking CMAs, far greater than the two percent goal; they also translate into 46.4 percent of special education enrollment, far greater than the 20 percent goal.
  • When 1 isolates CMA participation for grades four through viii, the percentages are larger: 5.9  pct of full enrollment and 52.3  percent of students with disabilities enrollment.
Table 2: 2022 CST, CMA and CAPA participation rates as a percentage of total enrollment

Tabular array 2: 2022 CST, CMA and CAPA participation rates every bit a percentage of full enrollment (click to enlarge)

  • For grades 4-8, administration of CMAs to students with disabilities far outweighs administration of the more rigorous CSTs, opposite to anticipation when the CMAs were approved in 2007. Clearly, something has gone awry during the implementation of the CMAs over the past v years.

2nd, nosotros can look at how the CMA program has affected the reporting of statewide assessment program results (see Table 4). These results involve percentages of students scoring Proficient and In a higher place on the CSTs. When more than than 200,000 special education students with low scores on a CST are removed from the calculations, the reported percents increase artificially.

This factor is easily understood as simply taking depression-scoring students out of the calculations, and – bingo! – the averages for the remaining students become up.

Not to identify this contributing crusade for increasing results is disingenuous. The data show that reported statewide assessment program results are inflated by about 25 percent over time.

Table 3: 2022 CST, CMA, and CAPA participation rates as a percentage of enrollment of Students with Disabilities

Table 3: 2022 CST, CMA, and CAPA participation rates as a percentage of enrollment of students with disabilities (click to enlarge)

Third, nosotros can wait at how the CMA program has affected the reporting of API results (run into Tabular array 5). For this analysis, we but have information from the elementary schoolhouse and middle schoolhouse grades; while CMAs were finalized for the loftier schoolhouse grades in 2011, the use of CMAs at the loftier school grades has not fully matured as withal. These data show that the gains in API scores reported over the past 5 years accept been inflated past fifteen points or 39 percent for elementary schools and 12 points or 27 percent for center schools.

Again, the reporting of inflated API trend information is disingenuous. Also, by giving the same weights to CMA and CST scores for API calculations, the accountability organisation provides motivation for districts to administrate more of the easier CMAs to artificially boost API results.  This motivation may explain at least to some degree the overuse of CMAs at the commune and school level.

Finally, it is interesting to look at CMA participation rates by local districts. (Click here for a breakdown of the CMA participation rate of 412 districts in xix counties.)

Table 4: STAR Reported gains vs STAR gains adjusted for inflation

Table four: CST reported gains vs CST gains adjusted for inflation (click to overstate)

These data evidence some extreme cases of very high use of CMAs past some big local districts, every bit well every bit cases of moderate utilize by other large districts:

  • San Bernardino administered CMAs to 76 pct of their students with disabilities enrollment; Fresno, Desert Sands, Santa Ana, Sweetwater High School District, Corona Norco, and Palmdale all administered CMAs to betwixt seventy and 74 pct of special educational activity students.
  • San Ramon Valley, Clovis, Downey, Irvine, Chino Valley, and Poway all administered CMAs to less than 30 pct of their students with disabilities.
  • At the county level, Riverside County districts administered CMAs to about 7 percent of their total enrollments, or 63 per centum of their special educational activity enrollments, more than 3 times the anticipated rates.
Table 5: CMA inflation effect on API scores in 2012

Table 5: CMA inflation effect on API scores in 2012: This table compares gains in statewide API scores as reported by the state superintendent to re-calculated APIs to accommodate for the introduction of CMA scores. It also calculates API inflation owing to the introduction of CMAs over the past v years (click to enlarge).

These local district CMA participation rates provide compelling evidence that something is haywire. The target is to have 20 percentage of special didactics students have CMAs. To have local districts test more than 75 percent indicates that something other than unproblematic judgment of what is best for the pupil.  My suspicion is ii factors contribute to these information: Kickoff, when given a choice to accept an easier examination or a more rigorous examination, homo nature gravitates toward easier tests; second, when given an opportunity to boost a district accountability score, developed administrators find a way to tilt individual IEP team decisions in that direction.

Policy shift for students with disabilities

How did California quietly lower expectations for half the special teaching students in the state? What tin can California do to address this "nether the surface" change for our expectations for special education students?

When California's current statewide assessment system was initially designed, there wasn't much attention to carve up tests or provisions for special education students. The start discussions for special didactics students involved defining and implementing various accommodations (alterations in testing formats that do non affect the validity of scores) and modifications (alterations in testing format that do bear upon validity of scores, such every bit reading an English language arts test to a educatee). Then, in the early 2000s, experts agreed that it would be inappropriate to give the more rigorous CSTs to virtually 10 percent of special education enrollment, or 1 percent of total enrollment – those students with severe cognitive challenges. Every bit a result, a so-called ane percent test was developed, the California Alternate Operation Assessment (CAPA) targeted for these students. During this time period, policy discussions clearly supported the notion that special instruction students needed to meet the same academic standards equally non-special education students, in order to maximize accomplishment for special education students.

When the federal government inverse its assessment policy for students with disabilities in 2006, it allowed for and then-called two percent tests, which measured the same academic content standards every bit the mainstream standards-based tests that were required for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) merely had modified achievement standards. This is technical jargon for lower actual achievement levels, or in result easier tests. The feds indicated these tests should be targeted for but 2 percent of the total enrollment in a state – the side by side-lowest two per centum above the 1 percent of astringent cerebral disability students targeted for CAPA. About half of the states so gear up out to design modified tests, or and so-called 2 per centum tests, for selected special instruction students. California was amongst those states, and it took from 2007 to 2022 for the CMAs to be developed and phased in. Unfortunately, California used the same functioning category labels for the new CMAs as were used for the more rigorous CSTs, and counted CMA scores the same as CST scores for API calculations. These assessment and accountability decisions have resulted in overuse of CMAs equally well as inflated API results.

Other states have handled the introduction of tests for students with disabilities in a meliorate mode. For example, Massachusetts uses unlike labels for functioning levels for the various versions of their differing tests. Different performance category labels would betoken personnel in districts and schools as well as students and parents that the CMA scores are different than CST scores.

Tennessee uses the same labels for modified assessments equally mainstream assessments, but uses a different calibration score arrangement for the 2 tests. This strategy is the same as the strategy that California used when CAPAs were introduced in the early 2000s – CAPA has a two-digit scale score system, while our CSTs utilize a three-digit calibration score organization. The calibration scores appear on individual student reports, thus alerting parents and students and teachers and administrators that the 2 tests are indeed different.

If California wants to address improve utilise of CMAs in schools, then clearly we should either change the operation level labels or change the scale score metrics, or perhaps alter both, in order to better communicate the meaning of the results of these assessments. Too, information technology would help the IEP teams immensely if they had information on the "impact" of assigning a student to an easier CMA. For instance, if an IEP team had data that assigning a CMA meant that the educatee merely had, say, a twenty pct take chances of earning a loftier school diploma while continuing to strive for the higher standard represented by a CST would give the student, say, a 70 or eighty per centum chance of earning a high school diploma, so IEP teams would be less likely to assign CMAs at the rates they do now. This information would simply exist truth in advertisement for CMAs.

If California wants to address the CMA aggrandizement factor for cess and accountability results reported each yr, this can be done relatively easily. For assessments, information technology's a matter of acknowledging the aggrandizement gene associated with CST data when scores from lower-scoring students are removed from the base CST results that are beingness reported. For accountability, information technology's a matter of assigning lower weights for API calculations for CMA vs CST scores, an adjustment to reflect the fact that CMA scores represent lower achievement levels than counterpart CST scores.

While critical of the implementation of CMAs over the by five years, I am not opposed to the CMA as a strategy to become more meaningful individual student exam scores for selected students with disabilities. Rather, I am critical of the assessment and accountability practices that accept allowed for inflated reporting of annual assessment and accountability results, and fostered gross overuse of CMAs by local districts. Appropriately implemented, the CMA strategy may well exist better than the computer-adaptive tests now beingness proposed to replace CMAs.

In 2011, U.S. Secretarial assistant of Education Arne Duncan weighed in on the issue of modified or 2 pct tests for students with disabilities when he declared he would not support modified tests "that obscure an authentic portrait of America'southward students with disabilities." Rather, he said that "Students with disabilities should be judged with the same accountability system as everyone else." With these statements, Duncan joined others opposing the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that silently plagues many otherwise well intentioned education initiatives.

We should pay attention to viewpoints from those individuals most affected by our statewide policies for students with disabilities. A year agone, when CMA issues were discussed by the Advisory Commission on Special Pedagogy, student member Matthew Stacy listened to the give-and-take and made several powerful statements on behalf of special education students on the topic of statewide tests. "It is unfair not to concord students with disabilities to the same standards as students without disabilities," he said, adding, "students with disabilities resent being held to lower standards."

"All that is needed is to make sure students with disabilities have all the necessary accommodations and modifications specified in their IEPs and and so hold those students to the same standards equally all other students," he said.

Sometimes it takes the wisdom of youth to cut to the chase and go on adults on target for proficient cess and accountability system policies and practices.

Doug McRae is a retired educational measurement specialist living in Monterey. In his 40 years in the One thousand-12 testing business, he has served as an educational testing company executive in charge of design and development of K-12 tests widely used across the United states of america, as well as an adviser on the initial design and development of California's STAR assessment organisation. He has a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

To go more than reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource'south no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.