Grant Targets Student Achievement Assessment
New grants of $17 million have been released by the Department of Education (DOE) to fund projects to improve the quality of assessment instruments and systems used by states to measure the achievement of all students–especially students with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency–under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The grants are funded from the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Fiscal Year 2002 budget.
Due to the importance of the state assessments to gauge state, school district, school and student progress toward state standards, the U.S. Department of Education is providing the funding to cover the costs of testing. ED provided $370 million in state assessment formula grants to all state education agencies (SEAs) last summer. The grants are all going to consortia of SEAs and other organizations, but individual SEAs were also eligible to apply. Each consortium will collaborate with institutions of higher education, research institutions or other organizations to improve the quality, validity and reliability of state academic assessments–even beyond the requirements in NCLB.
The funded projects focus on enhancement of assessments of students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency.
Four projects address the assessment of English proficiency, two focus on appropriate test design and accommodations for LEP students, one project examines appropriate accommodations for special education students, one aims to improve the technical quality of alternate assessments for students with severe disabilities, and one project will enhance state capacity to evaluate and document the alignment between state standards and state assessments.
The grants also enable consortia of states or individual states to:
–Measure student achievement using multiple measures of student academic achievement from multiple sources;
–Chart student progress over time; or –Evaluate student academic achievement through the development of comprehensive academic assessment instruments, such as performance- and technology-based academic assessment.
Under NCLB, states design and adopt their own state assessments, which must be aligned with state standards. The assessments provide parents and educators with information about how well each child is doing in school and whether schools are making adequate yearly progress toward state standards.
