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Laurene Christensen, Leila Williams, Marlene Johnstone, Tracy Cerda, and Phoebe Winter

The ALTELLA Project: Closing Our Knowledge Gap and Understanding Language Proficiency Testing for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities. Laurene Christensen, Leila Williams, Marlene Johnstone, Tracy Cerda, and Phoebe Winter. Presentation Overview. Background on the Project

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Laurene Christensen, Leila Williams, Marlene Johnstone, Tracy Cerda, and Phoebe Winter

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  1. The ALTELLA Project: Closing Our Knowledge Gap and Understanding Language Proficiency Testing for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities Laurene Christensen, Leila Williams, Marlene Johnstone, Tracy Cerda, and Phoebe Winter

  2. Presentation Overview Background on the Project Context from two states: Arizona Minnesota Discussion: Leila Williams Discussion: Phoebe Winter

  3. ALTELLA Project Goal • To develop a strong foundation upon which to build an alternate assessment of English language proficiency for English language learners with the most significant cognitive disabilities.

  4. ALTELLA State Partners ND WA MT VT MN ME WI SD OR ID WY MI NY NH IA NE PA MA CT IL IN OH RI NV UT CO WV KS MO NJ KY VA CA DE NC TN OK MD AR AZ NM SC MS AL TX LA GA FL AK HI

  5. ALTELLA Technical Advisory Committee • Erin Arango-Escalante • Derek Briggs • Wes Bruce • Jacqui Kearns • Judy Kraft

  6. Federal Requirements • ESEA 2001 requirements for school accountability • Reauthorization of IDEA 2004 • Alternate assessments • English language proficiency assessments • 2014 Federal guidance specifying alternate ELP assessments • 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act

  7. Definition of ELs with Significant Cognitive Disabilities English learners with significant cognitive disabilities are individuals with difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language as they are progressing toward English language proficiency, and who have one or more disabilities that significantly impact their intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior.

  8. Activity 1: Individual Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ) Aims to learn more about the population of ELs with significant cognitive disabilities Will develop an ICQ to be administered in each state as an electronic survey ICQ will elaborate on Learner Characteristics Inventory (LCI) by Kearns, Kleinert, Kleinert, & Towles-Reeves (2006) Additional information on students’ expressive and receptive language use of English and other languages at home and in school settings Additional information on students’ use of assistive and augmentative communication devices

  9. Activity 2: Classroom Observations and Teacher Interviews Aims to learn more about the classroom-based practices and approaches teachers use in working with ELs with significant cognitive disabilities Will develop classroom observation protocol to learn about: Strategies used to support English language development Approaches to expressive and receptive language use Use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems Other classroom accommodation use

  10. Activity 3: Standards Prioritization Aims to identify English language development standards that are critical for inclusion on an alternate English language proficiency assessment (ELPA) blueprint Will gather the various standards used by collaborating states to establish priority standards NCEO staff will draft a working paper on process of standards selection for item development This will be reviewed by state partners through a consensus building process

  11. Activity 4: Development of Item Templates Aims to establish the types of test items that will accurately assess the receptive and expressive English language development of ELs with significant cognitive disabilities and provide valid results and interpretations Item templates will incorporate the use AT devices and be linked to prioritized standards, coded with standards assessed and level of complexity The ALTELLA assessment system will be comprised of a bank of items and a minimum of two blueprints for each grade

  12. Activity 5: Development of Request for Proposals (RFP) Template Aims to maintain continued collaboration across states toward the effort of developing a full ALTELLA assessment States will be asked about preferred collaboration approaches and procurement challenges that can inhibit collaboration Two parts of RFP template Template RFP for item development Template RFP for field testing

  13. Arizona’s Target Students for ALTELLA

  14. Alternate Assessments in Arizona Who Takes an Alternate Assessment? Student with significant cognitive disabilities • Maybe a student with an intellectual disability; this is not limited to students with an intellectual disability- for example students with Autism. What Alternate Assessments are available? • MSAA- English Language Arts and Mathematics (Grades 3-8 and 11) • AIMS A Science (Grades 4, 8, and 10)

  15. 2014 – 2015 Test Takers • In 2014-2015, Arizona administered the NCSC operational ELA and Mathematics Alternate Assessments to 7,649 students • Percentage of Closed tests due to “No Observable Communication” was about 11%*

  16. Who are Arizona’s Alternate Assessment Students?2015-2016 About 75% of our students are in a self contained classroom setting for about 80- 90% of their day.

  17. 2015 Arizona Data for all SPED • 1,136,150 total students • 11,965 (1.1%) were identified as both ELL and SpEd Row 1 is Grade Row 2 is count identified as both ELL & SpEd by grade Row 3 is % who are both ELL and SpEd by grade Row 4 is % of SpEd who are also ELL by grade Row 5 is % of Significant Cognitive Disability students with a second language

  18. IDEA Disability Categorymulti-step comparison

  19. ELL Status (%) of Student with Significant Cognitive Disabilities who are also ELLMulti-state comparison

  20. Arizona Goals

  21. Grant Narrative “However, for most ELLs with SCDs, the heart of the problem is identifying whether the student has a language acquisition issue due to a disability, and whether the disability is significant, and without the student’s proficiency in English language, how do we know?”

  22. Grant Priority ALTELLA is a collaboration effort of states, project national expert panelists and consultants, and the National Center on Educational Outcomes; all partners will work collaboratively to establish a foundational knowledge basethat will be used to develop an alternate English language proficiency assessment based on alternate performance standards that are aligned to college and career readiness standards.

  23. Conceptualizing Accessibility for English Language Proficiency Assessments Martha Thurlow and Laurene ChristensenNational Center on Educational Outcomes, University of Minnesota, October 2014 Danielle Guzman-Orth and Cara Laitusis Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey The goal is to provide information that informs appropriate student support Access to a range of appropriate ELP assessments (including alternate screener and summative assessments measuring alternate achievement standards) is needed so that IEP teams can make appropriate participation decisions that benefit the test taker. Developing alternate assessments to measure ELP for ELs with significant cognitive disabilities would allow students to participate in the assessment and identification process to receive the supports needed to acquire the English language, rather than risk potential exclusion from language services because there is not an assessment appropriate for ELs with intellectual disabilities.

  24. ALL ELL Students say… Annela Teemant (Associate Professor, School of Education, Indiana University) ESL student perspectives on university classroom testing practices Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vol. 10, No. 3, November 2010, pp. 89 – 105. "We have to study harder … twice as hard" as native speakers.

  25. Language and Cognition In the last 40 years, language development research has moved steadily toward recognizing that language processing is cognition, language use is distributed cognition, and understanding children’s capacity for language means understanding the development and recruitment of general learning and cognitive processes. Gedeon O. Deák, University of California, San Diego Interrelationship of Language and Cognitive Development (2014) Encyclopedia for Language Development (pp. 284-291). P. Brooks & V. Kampe, Eds. SAGE

  26. English Language and Disability Needs Framework Shyyan, Christensen, et al.

  27. ALTELLA Team Collaborating state project coordinators: Arizona: Leila Williams, Marlene Johnston, Kelly Koenig Michigan: Jen Paul, Linda Howley Minnesota: Cheryl Alcaya, Tracy Cerda, Donna Tabat South Carolina: Amelia Brailsford, Jill Christmus West Virginia: Robert Crawford, Melissa Gholson NCEO Subcontract: Laurene Christensen, Vitaliy Shyyan, and Martha Thurlow Arizona will establish a subcontract with NCEO to carry out the activities in each of the stated objectives. NCEO Subcontractor: Phoebe Winter Technical Advisory Committee (TAC): Wes Bruce, Erin Arango Escalante, Derek Briggs, Jacqui Kearns, Judy Kraft External Evaluator: Courtney Foster

  28. Alternate Assessment Unit Audra Ahumada Director of Alternate Assessment Audra.Ahumada@azed.gov Angeles Swasey Program Project Specialist III Angeles.Swasey@azed.gov Hansley Mussotte MSAA Project Coordinator Hansley.Mussotte@azed.gov

  29. Minnesota’s Participation in ALTELLA

  30. Why are we part of ALTELLA? What do we know about the English language development of ELs with significant cognitive disabilities? How should we measure English language development in students with significant cognitive disabilities? What language supports do ELs with significant cognitive disabilities need and for how long?

  31. English Learners Enrolled in Minnesota 2015-2016

  32. English Learners with Disabilities2014-2015 Enrollment

  33. Who Participates in Minnesota Alternate Assessments?

  34. Minnesota Eligibility Requirements

  35. Alternate ACCESS Participation Criteria

  36. Proficiency of ELs on Reading and Mathematics Alternate Assessments

  37. Alternate ACCESS for ELLS

  38. Level P2, “Emerging,”on Alternate ACCESS for ELLS

  39. Our Goals Blueprint for an alternate ELP assessment that reflects what we’ve learned about the population since the development of the Alternate ACCESS. An understanding of the English language skills needed by ELs with significant cognitive disabilities to succeed academically. A means to ensure that ELs with cognitive disabilities receive the language supports they need throughout their years in school.

  40. Minnesota ALTELLA Team Cheryl Alcaya cheryl.alcaya@state.mn.us Donna Tabat donna.tabat@state.mn.us Tracy Cerda tracy.cerda@state.mn.us

  41. Discussion

  42. Thank You! • Final thoughts? • Questions: contact Laurene Christensen chri1010@umn.edu

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