Testing Deaf Students in an Age of Accountability

2. Academic Achievement of Deaf Students

2 Academic Achievement Ross E. Mitchell of Deaf Students The National Research Council (2001) identifies the practice of educational assessment as that which “seeks to determine how well students are learning and is an integral part of the quest for improved education. It provides feedback to students , educators, parents, policymakers, and the public about the effectiveness of educational services” (p. 1). Especially relevant to assessing the academic achievement of deaf students, this perspective assumes that the scores attained on standardized tests of academic achievement are valid and reliable indicators of what these students have learned; that the assessment results allow students as well as their families, teachers, and other interested parties to recognize their strengths and weaknesses; and that by identifying these strengths and weaknesses, families and schools have information that assists in designing and implementing programs and services that may improve the academic performance of these deaf students. The latest reauthorizations of the two major federal education laws, namely, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (hereafter NCLB) and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (hereafter IDEA 2004), substantially incorporate the National Research Council’s views on assessment.1 That is, in addition to mandating a regime for school-based accountability that depends on the results of student test performance, current federal law encourages highquality assessment practices that would provide detailed information about student academic performance and would be valuable for planning instruction and educational programming. ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT RECORD Two recent national studies provide important updates on the performance of deaf students on standardized assessments of academic achievement. The Gallaudet Research Institute established national norms for deaf and hard of hearing student performance on the Stanford Achievement Test Series, 10th edition (the National Deaf and Hard of Hearing Student Norms Project is described in Gallaudet Research Institute, 2004; Mitchell, Qi, & Traxler, 2008, in press), the fifth such study undertaken by the Gallaudet Research Institute over the last four decades (see also, e.g., Allen, 1986; Holt, Traxler, & Allen, 1992, 1997; Office of 1. For example, NCLB §1001.1; NCLB §§1111.b.3.C.ii, iii, xii, xv; and IDEA 2004 §614.b.3.A. 3 8 Demographic Studies, 1969; Traxler, 2000). At about the same time, SRI International conducted a similar study of deaf students’ academic achievement as part of a comprehensive evaluation of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997 (hereafter IDEA 1997) overseen by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) within the U.S. Department of Education (e.g., see Blackorby et al., 2005; Wagner et al., 2003; Wagner, Newman, Cameto, & Levine, 2006; focusing solely on students with hearing impairment, see Blackorby & Knokey , 2006). These two studies are not identical in design, nor do they report achievement results from the same assessment instrument, but they are complementary . Together, the results of these studies highlight serious concerns about the academic achievement levels of deaf students. Before presenting mathematics and reading achievement profiles for deaf students from the Gallaudet Research Institute and OSEP studies, two critical design differences need to be highlighted. First, the OSEP study did not specifically sample schools that enrolled students with hearing impairments (the applicable IDEA classification) whereas the Gallaudet Research Institute study used for its sampling frame a limited registry of schools and programs known to be serving deaf students . The consequence of this difference is that the Gallaudet Research Institute study is likely to overrepresent (a) deaf students with more severe hearing loss and (b) deaf students who attend schools for the deaf and other special programs that have relatively large numbers of deaf students (for a description of biases in the Gallaudet Research Institute study sampling frame, see Mitchell, 2004). Another way to look at this difference is that the OSEP study is likely to have a greater proportion of students who are hard of hearing compared with the Gallaudet Research Institute study. These prevalence differences between the two studies in severity of hearing loss and instructional program setting placement mean that achievement levels are expected to be higher for the OSEP study participants than for those in the Gallaudet Research Institute study (for a discussion of the relationship between achievement and deaf students’ characteristics, see Karchmer & Mitchell, 2003). Second, the OSEP study is longitudinal in its design whereas the Gallaudet Research Institute study is cross-sectional. As a result, except for replacements recruited because of attrition, the OSEP study is focused on a specific cohort of students identified for special education in 2000 regardless of...