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Illustration of a Validity Argument for Two Alternate Assessment Approaches. Presentation at the OSEP Project Directors’ Conference Steve Ferrara American Institutes for Research August 1, 2006. Goal.
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Illustration of a Validity Argument for Two Alternate Assessment Approaches Presentation at the OSEP Project Directors’ Conference Steve Ferrara American Institutes for Research August 1, 2006
Goal • Illustrate planning for the validation process for large-scale assessments using standards-based alternate assessments from two states • Use selected examples from the paper Standards and Assessment Approaches for Students with Disabilities Using a Validity Argument
Over-arching concept • Provide evidence to support intended inferences about students • Consideration of assessment design (i.e., tasks, administration conditions, scoring) • Plans for collecting procedural and empirical evidence • Important specific principles and recommendations in the paper
Examples from the paper • Massachusetts alternate assessment portfolio (Weiner, 2002) • Oregon performance tasks (Tindal et al., 2003) • Mathematics, grades 3-5 • Intended inferences • The assessment adequately reflects the domain of knowledge and skills for the construct • The assessment accurately identifies students’ level of proficiency in mathematics
Procedural evidence • Test design and development process • Quality of the items and tasks • Assemblage of items/tasks/evidence into an assessment • Administration and scoring process
Empirical evidence • Alignment between the alternate content standards and the assessment items/tasks/evidence (and linkage to grade level/band standards) • Item/task functioning • Reliability of scoring and test score interpretations • Internal relations among items and tasks • Response processes • External relations with other measures
Target math standards • Massachusetts standards • Grades three and four standards that focus on number sense (seven objectives) and operations (three objectives) • Oregon mathematics standards • Numbers, Computation and Operations—Grades four to five
MA: Possible assessment strategies and portfolio products • Addressing access skill(s) (skills embedded in academic instruction) • Alice participates in this activity by assembling money envelopes paired with pictures. Alice works with a classmate who counts the money needed for each item and helps Alice place the correct amount into its corresponding envelope. Alice exchanges these envelopes when making a purchase.
Possible portfolio products (cont.) • Teacher note describing the work accomplished by Alice and her classmate • Data collected on Alice’s ability to assemble money envelopes and exchange correct envelopes when making a purchase • Videotape of Alice making a purchase • Alice’s choice of money envelopes selected for her portfolio
Oregon item • Standard: Read, write, order, model, and compare whole numbers up to 1,000,000, common fractions, and decimals up to hundredths. • Practice Item 24: Find the missing number in the pattern. • 2.6 5.2 ___ 20.8 • (A) 7.8 (B) 10.4 (C) 13.0 (D) 15.6 • Alternate Assessment Task 11: Order Numbers • Present the number cards in this order: 3, 1, 8, 6. • Say: Place these numbers in order from smallest to largest.
Summary • (MA) Assemble money envelopes with a classmate, make purchases • Teacher observations of Alice working, videotape of making purchases • (OR) Order numbers from smallest to largest
Conclusion • The same types of validity questions apply for all (alternate) assessment approaches • How the questions are posed and the evidence relevant to those questions may differ • Intended inferences, corresponding validity questions, and evidence: • Identify during the conceptualization, design, and development process • Pursue during development and as part of implementation
References Tindal, G., McDonald, Tedesco, M., Glasgow, A., & Almond, P., Crawford, L., Hollenbeck, K. (2003). Alternate assessments in reading and math: Development and validation for students with significant disabilities. Exceptional Children, 69(4), 481–494. Wiener, D. (2002). Massachusetts: One state's approach to setting performance levels on the alternate assessment. (Synthesis Report 48). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes. Retrieved Dec. 8, 2005 from http://education.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/Synthesis48.html.