State Performance Plan 2005-2012 - Part B - Arkansas Department Of Education Page 107

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Arkansas Department of Education Special Education Unit
Part B State Performance Plan
• Maintained or reached age level;
• Made gains on age level;
• Did not make gains on age level but made personal progress; and
• Did not make gains on age level or personal progress.
Pilot Study Outcomes:
The EC Outcome pilot study revealed the following on each of the functional outcomes.
• Parents tend to give their children higher functional scores than special education
providers (teachers and related service providers). Parents also tend to evaluate more
children as not improving over the 6-month review period than special education teachers;
• The curriculum based assessment (CBA) and teacher scoring show similar patterning.
Both identify more EC children as reaching or maintaining age level and more EI children
as gaining on age level. Special education teachers tend to evaluate a slightly lower
percentage of students as reaching or maintaining age level and a slightly higher
percentage of students as gaining on age level than general education teachers;
• A comparison of the teacher assessment average percentages and the overall total
assessment averaged percentages revealed a variance of three percentage points,
demonstrating that when observed as a whole, assessment scores are generally similar
across evaluators; and
• A higher percentage of EI children show no improvement under the positive social
relationship outcome. This may be a result of less social interaction due to age, or the
outcome may be harder to evaluate with younger children. Across the board, EI children
are more likely to be evaluated as showing no improvement. Once again, this may be due
to age, maturity level, and/or fewer life experiences in general. Additionally, EI children
may be more difficult to evaluate than older EC children.
A look into functional level advancement across evaluators shows that no less than 39% of all
children assessed jumped three levels or more [on the seven point scale] over the 6-month
evaluation period. Over 50% of the children evaluated by their parents were shown to advance
three or more functional levels within the review period.
Functional scores, which increased by three or more levels during the 6-month evaluation
period, raised questions as to why such an extreme advancement in functionality would occur
over a short period of time. These questions include:
• Was the child’s initial assessment underscored?
• Was the child’s 6-month assessment over-scored?
• Were the outcome definitions, functional scale, and assessment instructions clearly
defined and understood by all those involved in conducting the evaluations? If not, at
which point did the communication between administrators and evaluators fail? How
can this communication be improved for future assessments?
These are questions to be considered in future studies. It is extremely rare and unexpected for
children with disabilities to improve at such a dramatic rate in such a short period of time.
However, within a 6-month observation period, one would expect this type of advancement to
be rare if altogether non-existent. Therefore, questions as to why these extreme jumps in
functional scores occurred should be raised and addressed when designing and conducting
future assessment studies.
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