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WEEK ONE INSTRUCTOR GUIDANCE

Welcome to ESE610, Assessment and Evaluation of Students with Mild to Moderate Disabilities! As you are aware by now, the program has been designed around key elements in the field of special education to prepare you for your role in the education of students with disabilities.

Each week before beginning your assignments and initial discussion board post, it is necessary that you review the Instructor Guidance. The Instructor Guidance is an integral part of the course and both supplements the required and recommended readings, videos and multimedia webpages for each week of material, and provides important and required resources for your success. In this course the practical applications are found within the scenarios and introduction to each week of the course. Information in the Instructor Guidance should be used to support your discussion posts, responses, and other required assignments.

The entire Master of Arts, Special Education (MASE) program, is focused on the following assumptions (a) all children can learn, (b) children have diverse learning styles, and (c) the teacher’s belief in each child’s abilities supports the child’s success. As with all your courses, it is imperative that you embrace the premise that, regardless of ability level, cultural background, or learning differences, in physically and emotionally safe environments, all children can learn. This includes creating a safe experience around the process of assessment and evaluation.

In this course you will learn about the vital role of assessment and evaluation in the identification of students with special needs. You will also learn how the assessment and evaluation process contributes to the creation of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) for students who are eligible for special education and related services under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA). As we begin the course we focus on the historical context of the process of assessment and evaluation and some key legal decisions that currently impact the processes by which students are assessed and evaluated to determine their right to a free and appropriate public education. As you learned from your resources this week, we have come a long way since the times when children with disabilities were routinely excluded from participation in public school and when the existing assessment and evaluation processes did not take cultural or social differences into account.

As you learned from your resources this week, we have come a long way since the times when children with disabilities were routinely excluded from participation in public school and when the existing assessment and evaluation processes did not take cultural or social differences into account.

Week One Discussion Guidance

As usual, we begin this course by introducing ourselves in the  Post Your Introduction  discussion forum.  In this discussion you will reflect on your own history and experiences with testing, assessment, and evaluation.  For some, the experiences may have been neutral or even positive.  For others, the experiences of testing and evaluation may have been less positive or even painful.  Either way, reflecting on your own experiences will help to ensure that those experiences do not unconsciously influence your work as a professional.  As McKinney (2011) states, "… ultimately we look inward so that we might look outward with greater clarity, patience and compassion." (para 27).

In the second discussion for this week,  The Process for Identification , you are reviewing the IDEA from the perspective of assessment and evaluation.  As you recall from your previous classes the IDEA has had a major impact on the process and definition of special education in the United States. As a special educator your role is to ensure that the students in your program receive assessment and evaluation services that meet the intent of this law (Bradley, 2015).  Below is a short video clip showing the signing of this important bill.

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Be sure to review the classifications for eligibility for special education services according to the IDEA. These are found on pp. 16 and 17 of your text (Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2012).  Since the category "Specific Learning Disability" (SLD) is the most common, you need to be especially familiar with this particular classification.

As per your text on pp. 17 and 18, the 13 classifications for disability under IDEA include the following disabling conditions.

A child may be eligible for special education services if they meet at least one of these conditions and a determination is made that the child is eligible for special education services.  According to the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY) Disability Fact Sheet 7 (FS-7), about one in five Americans has a learning disability.  In fact, learning disabilities comprise over 30 percent of all the disabilities found in children in special education (NICHCY, 2011).  For more information on learning disabilities, please see the article Specific Learning Disabilities (Links to an external site.). 

The information in this informative document can also be located on the Center for Parent Information and Resources (Links to an external site.) website.  Both the document and website will be useful resources for you as you continue this course and the information can help you with the application for this week.

Please review the discussion board rubric prior to your initial post to ensure you are fully meeting each of the set criteria to earn full credit. As per the rubric requirements your initial post should include relevant professional, personal, or other real-world experiences in a manner that is rich in thought and provides valuable insight into the topic.

Additionally, all elements of the discussion board prompt should be thoroughly addressed with strong and precise connections to previous and/or current course content, or to real-life situations. When substantively replying to your peers’ post, be sure to provide a thorough and constructive analysis relating the response to relevant course concepts that incorporates pertinent follow-up thoughts or questions about the topic, and demonstrates respect for the diverse opinions of fellow learners.

Finally, while it may difficult to do for all the responses to your posts, please make an effort to respond back to those who took the time to respond to your initial posts with at least a simple "Thank you for your response to my posting." It is the courteous and gracious thing to do, and has the potential to make our classroom community discussions more interesting and rich.  In addition, answering questions posed by your peers invites continued learning, meaningful application, and relevant extension of the discussion.

Week One Assignment Guidance

Historical Perspective and Landmark Cases. As you have learned in the previous three courses, there is a rich history of landmark court cases that have transformed special education from a privilege to a right. Three cases in particular have impacted the processes of assessment and evaluation for students with mild to moderate disabilities. They involve the practice of tracking students based on only one assessment early in their educational career and the use of assessment instruments that are not valid for the population being tested because of cultural or linguistic diversity.

An example of an assessment that would not be culturally valid would be one that based all children's abilities on language and concepts commonly found in parts of the United States that experience snow and other seasonal changes. Children who grow up in regions where it does not snow or where the seasonal variations are subtle may not be familiar with terms such as "mittens" or "sleet" because they have not been exposed to these concepts. If they are asked to define these terms on an assessment of their receptive vocabulary (often used as a proxy for intelligence) they may appear to be less capable than if they had been assessed using vocabulary and concepts more familiar to their region.

As our country becomes more and more culturally and linguistically diverse it becomes imperative that you, as a special educator, must be willing and able to become culturally competent in your use of assessment instruments and in your evaluation of the results of student assessments. Click on the link below to view a short You Tube video defining the components of cultural intelligence.

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For your first assignment, you will write a paper analyzing these three key cases and the effect they have had on the field. These cases are Hobson v. Hansen (Links to an external site.); Dina v. State Board of Education (Links to an external site.); and Larry P v. Wilson Riles (Links to an external site.). As you write this paper ask yourself, "How am I culturally intelligent?" Consider how the landmark cases that relate to fairness in assessment and evaluation have helped special educators as a group to become more culturally intelligent. Consider the role these cases have played in raising our awareness of the need for cultural intelligence in the assessment and evaluation of students with mild to moderate disabilities.

Make sure to use the Grading Rubric as a self-checklist before submitting the final copy of your assignment to confirm you have met or exceeded each required expectation. The highest level of achievement on the rubric is “distinguished”, which is only earned through exceeding posted expectations at the proficiency level. Please remember you are in a masters-level program. Therefore, your writing, research, and content are held to graduate-level expectations.

Recommendation

The MASE program provides the opportunity for you to create an online portfolio that can be used in your career development and professional practice. Throughout the program you will have various assessments that can be included in this e-portfolio and these will be finalized in the last course of the MASE program, Capstone coure, ESE699. You may select this assignment and subsequent coursework to include as artifacts. Therefore, it is strongly encouraged you save your coursework on a flash-drive (e.g., a USB removable drive) or store in a cloud-based option such as Dropbox, GoogleDrive, or other similar applications.

REFERENCES

CQ Wheel [Livinginstitute] (2013, September 13). What is cultural competence? (Links to an external site.)  [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ_LclEJU8k (Links to an external site.) C-Span Disabilities Education Improvement Bill Signing. [Anonymous User]. (2004, December 3). 2004 IDEA improvement act: the signing of the Disability Education Improvement Bills Dec 3, 2004 (Links to an external site.). [Video file] Retrieved from http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4169140/2004-idea-improvement-act. Bradley, M. (2015).  IDEA/IDEIA: Individuals with disabilities education act (Links to an external site.). Frostburg State University Center for Children and Families. Retrieved from http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/disabilities/IDEA.html McKinney, M. (spring, 2011) Know thyself! But why? (Links to an external site.)  [BlogPost]. Retrieved from  http://www.parentcenterhub.org/wp-content/uploads/repo_items/fs7.pdf http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/personal-development/self-knowledge/44343.aspx NICHCY (2011, January).  Learning disabilities (Links to an external site.). [NICHCY Disability Fact Sheet #7]. Retrieved from http://www.parentcenterhub.org/wp-content/uploads/repo_items/fs7.pdf Pierangelo, R., & Giuliani, G. A. (2012). Assessment in special education: A practical approach. Boston: Pearson.

Source for Visual

Elementary School in Kentucky, 1946 (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from Google Docs [Creative Commons Image] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_school_%28United_States%29