This report examines the relationship between various characteristics of students with disabilities (SD) and the probability that they would be included in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments. Characteristics examined included the type of disability, the severity level of the disability, and whether the student requires accommodations not permitted by NAEP. For various reasons, inclusion of SDs varies from state-to-state, and sometimes within states from year-to-year. Some students, for example, cannot participate meaningfully in the assessments due to the nature of their disabilities or because their Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs) specify an accommodation that is not permitted in NAEP assessments. To address the concern that such fluctuations may affect the validity of reports on achievement trends, NAEP has:
- instituted policies for providing test accommodations for students with disabilities;
- developed methodologies to correct for the bias resulting from changing inclusion rates, and
- implemented procedures to increase the number of SDs included in the assessment.
In response to a recent study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) about the inclusion of students with disabilities in large-scale assessments, NAEP used two statistical models--a state-specific and nation-based model--to measure whether these new strategies for inclusion can be reliably associated with higher state-by-state inclusion rates. The statistical analysis examined the changes in inclusion rates from 2005 to 2007 for 4th and 8th grade mathematics and reading assessments. The results of this Research and Development study indicate that although the majority of the states did not experience statistically significant changes in their rates of inclusion, most states that did change significantly were found less inclusive in 2007 compared to 2005. The states whose inclusion rates significantly increased in 2007 had relatively low inclusion rates in 2005.
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