Testing is the method to observe students’ progress and the needs that they may face. There are other forms of testing such as assessment.  Assessment can be formal or informal and it helps evaluating behavior and academic progress.  Assessment can happen during class time when the teacher check what the student is doing with the information and how he solves a problem or develops an answer.  This is how the teacher makes decisions about the next steps in her lesson plans.  Informal assessment helps to make adjustments in the lesson to better present the curriculum to the students.  
The teacher makes error analysis and takes action of what the student needs to accomplish the academic or behavior goal.  

 

The RTI (Response to Intervention) process helps the teacher to record the actions and testing taken to assist the students who are struggling with their academics or behavior.  IDEA is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  They ensure fairness in testing students.  The ESEA is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Law of 2001 that states that all students should achieve academic success. 

 

An important concept referring to students from a specific ethnic group is dis-proportionality.  This is when m the same ethnic groups keeps being referred to special education or that they belong to students at risk continuously.  Over representation is when the number of students who qualified to receive special services belong to a specific ethnic group.

Research
I found this special Education Procedures Manual in the Washoe County School District official website. It has 197 pages but it is easy to read. You can find information easily.  Chapter 4, for example, describes how the process of identification goes.  It explains the steps of  intervention. I think it is clear and it will help me to better explain myself the interventions when I am in an IEP.  It also explains about evaluation and referrals.  The Individual with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA) and Nevada Administrative Code (NAC), the District has a “Child Find” is explain clearly there.  Children with special needs, homeless families, migrant children, and related services are explained there.  


References
Overton, T. 2016. Assessing Learners with Special Needs: an applied approach. Pearson. 8th Edition. 
Special Education Procedura Manual where parents can see https://www.washoeschools.net/cms/lib/NV01912265/Centricity/Domain/76/SPED%20Procedure%20Manual%207-17-%2017.pdf 

References
NCLD, (2020). Significant Disproportionality in Special Education:
Current Trends and Actions for Impact.

Graham, J. & Wright, P. 2020. Transition Planning: setting lifelong goals. Retrieved from https://www.wrightslaw.com/info/trans.plan.graham.htm

There are many things to learn in Chapter 3 regarding descriptive statistics.  The book emphasized the importance of how to read and interpret standard assessment results as well as other normed test results.  There were many key ideas that are important in interpreting and explaining test results.   The first important idea relates to the importance and meaning of standard scores.  Raw scores are derived from the assessment and calculated into a standard score.   The standard scores are a range of numbers where there is a mean score which is considered the average.  Most of the time the mean is usually a standard score of 100.    The central tendency is that beautiful bell curve with the mean average score right in the middle at the top of the curve.  The rest of the scores flow to the left of that number and also to the right of that number.   Numbers that move to the right are scores that denote a high value, while numbers to the left denote a low value.  Within that bell curve there is also the concept of standard deviations.  Standard deviations move away from the standard mean score in the direction of high end outliers and low end outliers.  Standard deviations are a calculation from the mean and can move by 15 point steps or so in either direction away from the mean.  In special education, we are concerned about numbers that are more than one standard deviation below or above the mean.  We may also be concerned about numbers that are 4 standard deviations above the mean.  Chapter 3 was very basic in explaining descriptive statistics since it really is a very deep and muddy subject.  The very basics are those ideas that will help us as educators be able to interpret test scores.

So much interest is found in the idea of central tendency.  Manikandan (2011), discusses the meaning of central tendency and all of the mathematical components that go with it.  This even includes geometric and harmonic mean which admittedly is way in depth and absolutely difficult to understand.  However, the discussion in this article defines the meaning of central tendency as the mean in which is the most typical in collected data.  This means that central tendency is not only used for identifying atypical children in an educational setting.  It is also used to represent anything.  Upon collecting data for any given subject, there is always a mean, median, and a mode up which we can find a central tendency.

In our work experience as educators we use MAPS as a tool and as a way to show student achievement compared to a national sample.  According to Jensen (2015), the standard error of measurement indicates how precise a measure is.  Jensen discusses the idea that all assessment scores are an estimate.  That is a very important concept because sometimes we come up with numbers that seem like a definite.  Therefore, it is important to use an assessment with a small confidence interval so that we can be confident that a student lies somewhere in that very tight range when using MAPS data.  We can be confident that the MAPS is a reliable tool not only because it has been tested but because it has a tight standard error of measurement.

Our group discussed what all of this meant.  It is a very hard concept to understand and one of our group members said that she needs someone to slow down and explain it.  Most of the group found the whole chapter very difficult to understand.  We talked a lot about standard scores and standard deviations.  We looked a the bell curve together in the book and discussed how the standard deviations work.  We also reviewed all of the vocabulary words and discussed their meaning.

References

Manikandan, S. (2011). Measures of Central Tendency: The Mean. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3127352/.

Jensen, Nate. (2015). Making Sense of Standard Error of Measurement. https://www.nwea.org/blog/2015/making-sense-of-standard-error-of-measurement/.

Norm referenced tests are also referred to standardized tests.  These are tests that are important in demonstrating how students in a grade level are achieving compared to other students in our country.  There is a very important process that takes place in developing these assessments.  This includes a very important process of sampling, pooling, and field testing.  It is important to attain reliability and validity in assessing populations of students.  It is also important to consider populations of diversity and to be sure everyone is represented.  When giving norm referenced tests, there are certain steps that should be followed in administering the test.  It is so important to develop a relationship with the student, provide an environment that is calm among other things.  It is very important that the examiner be ethical in giving the test, this includes careful wording and use of words in motivating the student to keep going.  The test must be given exactly how it is intended.  Chapter 5 also goes into a discussion about high stakes tests. High stakes tests include those that help the state determine high quality schools.  They are tests that basically hold schools absolutely accountable.  Therefore, sound norm referenced tests must be developed to demonstrate student achievement in a particular school.  These results are reported publicly and if there are weaknesses, then there will be an action planned developed to ensure more quality for the attainment of growth and achievement in students.

Amrein and Berliner (2003), discuss how high stake assessments affect students by looking at high school drop out rates in states where schools make use of extensive high stakes testing.  The article looks at how retention, ACT and SAT tests are affected.  The overall finding is that these high stakes assessments do contribute to higher drop out rates and greater retention.  In a more recent article, the same finding comes to light ten years later.  Spann (2015), suggests that students are not always receiving a high quality education because more time is being spent on teaching students test taking skills.  Furthermore, it creates anxiety in students and self esteem issues which impact their future, therefore contributing some drop out rates.  Spann, also argues that students have become a score and that they are truly more than a score.  The real winners in the entire concept are the test makers as they bring in millions of dollars for the purchasing of their tests that hold schools accountable.  

In reviewing more articles that relate to the chapter, there are some interesting finds regarding ethicalities in administering tests.  Romano (2020), discusses the pressure that is placed upon teachers in producing high achieving students and scores that reflect that.  This article discusses the ethics of teachers in how they are teaching to prepare students for tests.  The suggestion is that teachers who spend more time prepping students for tests and also teaching them how to test and giving important content is unethical.  This was a very different way of looking at ethics and high stakes assessments.

Our group talked about how norm referenced tests create anxiety and fear among teachers in schools .  Because of the accountability, it has also become a hard reality for kids.  Kids are expected to perform on high stakes assessments.  There is so much preparation that takes place which can create anxiety for students and teachers.  We also discussed how tests are administered and we all talked about how we have to really monitor our own feedback to students as they are testing.  It is hard getting out of the habit of saying good job for example, and trying more often to focus on the work the student is producing.

References

Amrein, A. L. Berliner, D. C. (2003). The Effects of High Stakes Testing on Student Motivation and Learning. 
https://people.wou.edu/~girodm/611/testing_and_motivation.pdf

Spann, P. (2015).  The Negative Effects of High Stakes Testing. 

https://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/law/centers/childlaw/childed/pdfs/2015studentpapers/Spann.pdf

Arroyo-Romano, J. Benigno, S.  (2020). The Ethical Teacher in a High Stakes TestingEnvironment.  

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318399745_The_Ethical_Teacher_in_a_High-Stakes_Testing_Environment

Because the KTEA-3 is the assessment used by educators in Nevada, it is important to look at information regarding the KTEA-3 and how it measures against other assessments.  The Key Math 3D-A, KTEA-3, and the Woodcock Reading Mastery tests were administered to an intellectually disabled student according to Kassel (2018).  The researchers wanted to determine achievement in the areas of math and reading as a comparison.

The initial thought was that there was concurrent validity in which that finding was not upheld.  Through a very careful methodology, the student was given the standardized tests and it was found that the student was two standard deviations below the mean.  This article was like a science experiment but also very informative.  The examiners as a result were able to obtain a lot of information on the student and therefore had a greater insight into recommendations.

With error analysis being such an intriguing concept, the search for research regarding this area was completed with an entirely different result.  Even more intriguing was some research on teaching students in seventh grade how to do their own error analysis mathematics.  A control group was formed and the teacher used error analysis to determine the errors and then taught the students what they needed to know.  The second group, which was the treatment group was taught how to do error analysis in their own mathematical errors.  This study went on for six weeks.  At the end of the six weeks, the students who could do their own error analysis performed significantly better on a given assessment that was given to both groups.  This has proved to be such a different way of looking at error analysis and maybe doesn’t really relate but so interesting.

We discussed how we have actually done error analysis but didn’t really realize that it was called that.  Interestingly, we talked about the importance of that information.  While the standard score is needed, so is the analysis of the items in the assessment given.  We also asked if we have given any of the asessments in the chapter.  We mostly talked about the differences in aptitude and achievement tests and other important vocabulary in the chapter.

References

Kassel, K. (2018). Academic Assessment of a Student with Intellectual Disabilities. 

https://digitalcommons.longwood.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1039&context=grs

Rushton, S.J. (2018). Teaching and learning mathematics through error analysis.  https://fieldsmathed.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40928-018-0009-y#author-information

There are different ways to check for students’ progress.  These methods are not formal but they help the teacher to check where the students are missing concepts from the curriculum-based measurement.  These informal assessments help the teacher to make choices about future lessons. 

A summative evaluation is an assessment applied at the end of a teaching period, semester, or end of unit.   Curriculum Based Evaluation is a test where records and materials created by the student may be used to take instructional choices. 

 

One common tool to count the number of words the students can read aloud in a timed manner is called Oral-Reading Fluency. The tool Maze measures for reading comprehension where the student exchanges words with similar meanings to create the same idea using synonyms.  Another way to progress test is the Baseline Score, which measures the number of errors in three passages and then the teacher counts the correct ones.  The Aimline is to find the goal line in the curriculum based measurement.
A math Probe contains 25 math problems and this test needs to be completed as much as the student can in two minutes. A Performance assessment is how the student applies the knowledge Assessment that utilizes a student-created product as a demonstration of knowledge.   The way teachers measures students’ skills is by using the Criterion-Referenced Tests.  This test compares by using a set of criteria to measure such skill.

Research
There is a complete web page from the Washoe School District with complete reports on how the students preformed in different formal assessments. You can find DRAs, MAPs, different test manuals, and teachers' resources to follow different assessments. There are different guides for parents and they are in Spanish and English. There are training links where to better understand the testing procedures and rules. 


References
Overton, T. 2016. Assessing Learners with Special Needs: an applied approach. Pearson. 8th Edition. 

https://www.washoeschools.net/Page/14122