FAIRLY ASSESSING PROGRESS IN MATHEMATICS FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

Syndey Linder

Background

Assessment is an essential part of building an effective instructional program. Students need practice taking tests to demonstrate their independent abilities and educators need to provide tests to measure student progress. At Mary McDowell Friends School our status as a self-contained Quaker school for students with learning disabilities complicates the reality of accurately assessing our students.

The need for formal assessment speaks to questions/concerns that teachers, parents, and outside team members have when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of special education. In our setting we find that assessment frequently fails to capture the full scope of student ability. This reality is at odds with the need to formally identify and prove evidence of student progress.

I have found a number of factors that are at play in attempting to measure formal progress for students in a Quaker school that is searching to assess equitably and responsively while also acknowledging  the particular needs to measure gains for students with Learning Disabilities whose progress is reported to the Department of  Education in New York City.

Exploration/Learning

This fall, a series of questions remained for me to explore, research and collect information about from colleagues.

The first area where I worked to gather data is in regard to responsive math assessments used across schools. I spoke with teachers in other Special Education settings to see what assessment looks like in their schools. This component of my action research was not particularly effective. Schools use a wide variety of assessment programs, and ultimately, I needed to reach out to more schools that serve our particular population.

As is true across academic contexts, there are large gaps in resources and materials when it comes to formally assessing students that have been diagnosed with learning disabilities. In math, students graphomotor, reading, sequencing, and executive functioning struggles impact the quality of their computational abilities. This leads to subjective differentiation and unregulated accommodations related to gathering information. If the goal is to gather formal data, these gaps lead to a terrible hurdle for schools to clear in order to fairly and fully understanding student growth.

Additionally, it was important that I continue reading about best practices for assessing students with learning disabilities in math - including students with dyscalculia. Based on my research, there are an increasing number of formal assessments that responsively measure specifc learning disabilities in math but few curricula that are designed with dyscalculia or other learning disabilities in mind. At this time, educators and evaluators are focusing on testing accommodations that can support students in the testing environment.

Next steps

1. Reevaluating the Spring assessment

A number of important points arose from the initial spring assessment we gave during the 2022-2023 school year.

• First, students generally performed poorly on the assessments, despite being given appropriate accommodations. This tells me that I need to both revisit the format of the assessment and make sure that the language, directions, and space on the page feel accessible to the test takers and I need to caucus with teachers to hear their feedback about how to improve the format of the assessments.

• Second, tests were used to inform group placement but were not always used effectively. Due to the constraints on us around class placement, we are not always able to keep learners who are assessed to be a good ft, in the same group. Additionally, we do not have the same tests to place new students.

• Third, we need to consider if purchasing a division wide subscription to a formal assessment measure along the lines of MAP or Key Math, would be valuable and a better use of our resources to reach the aim of improving our accuracy in tracking growth. At this time, a small team of faculty and administrators are working together to reevaluate our spring assessment considering my findings.

2. Tracking student progress over time to gather information about progress/outcomes

In order to measure progress over the three years of middle school, or even, longitudinally throughout a student’s time in a self-contained setting, we need to collect, organize, and maintain the data collected from our assessments each year. This tracking can live with the Academic Dean, but I believe must include math teachers, a math coach, and the school psychologist who has access to outside evaluations and other formal tests that may be necessary to elucidate particular details. Tracking student progress through data will take place over several years. My goal is to do a larger scale review of the data we collect at the end of three years (a full cycle of middle school assessments).

3. Align our MS assessments across all three school divisions

If the goal of this project is to fairly assess students in an independent school with three divisions, then all three divisions have be aligned in certain elements of our testing for students with learning disabilities. Instructional goals in Lower, Middle, and Upper school are different, however, there are a few areas where I believe alignment would be beneficial to being able to show evidence for long term progress.

• Collecting, organizing, and maintaining data about students in the same way

• Using a standardized list of testing accommodations

• Having familiarity with the math scope and sequence of skills for each grade level (as laid out in norm-referenced curricula)

• Having shared language for describing student progress to families

At this time, I am working alongside the Upper School Academic Dean and the Math Department Chair to begin building the first bridge related to math assessments - the tests given to rising 9th grade students before they enter the Upper School.

4. Share the data we gather with other schools Students who require special education services are at a disadvantage when it comes to tools, resources, and effective testing strategies to measure their progress. An essential next step in this work will be to share the learning and positive outcomes of this work with other schools - public and private.

A paradox that remains for the students at MMFS is that - for most of them - their specialized, Quaker education is monitored by the blunt processes of the Department of Education. In my work informing families about student progress, quantifying that progress for the DOE, and helping teachers develop curriculum that fully captures what growth is being made - I fnd that of God in every person is in the front of my mind. Yes, our students are federally guaranteed this education under IDEA but I often feel that they uniquely deserve this education through the lens of the testimonies and values that are the roots of Quaker education.

SYDNEY LINDER

Middle School Academic DeanMary McDowell Friends SchoolBrooklyn, NY

Before stepping into my role as Middle School Academic Dean, I have held positions in public and private institutions as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, curriculum coordinator, and CSE (Committee on Special Education) coordinator - a role unique to Mary McDowell Friends School (MMFS) - liaising with the DOE in our work supporting students with learning disabilities in a self-contained setting. These roles have each developed my craft and commitment to Quaker education. Currently, my role at MMFS involves supervising faculty, acting as a writing coach for Literacy teachers, running new teacher meetings throughout the school year, communicating with parents, pushing in to classrooms to support academic instruction and teaching a small 6th-grade Literacy group. I am privileged to learn and grow in my community every day.