One State's Story: Access and Alignment to the GRADE-LEVEL Content for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities. Synthesis Report 57

In December, 2004, the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) hosted one of its series of national telephone conferences on the topic of access and alignment to the grade-level content for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Dan Wiener from the Massachusetts Department of Education was the practitioner presenter. Dan Wiener's presentation was a powerful case study of why and how one state, Massachusetts, ensures that ALL children have access to the grade level curriculum, and achieve at high levels. This publication is in response to many requests for his story. He presents a model for using grade level content standards for developing instruction and assessments aligned with the requirements of NCLB for students who will be assessed in alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards. A case study is described in which the State of Massachusetts equipped its special educators with the same content knowledge that general educators have, so they could put their considerable skills to work adapting and modifying that curriculum, because that is what special educators already do well. The State of Massachusetts provided those special educators who work with students who are the most difficult to include in the curriculum with a roadmap to make it possible for them to grasp, at a conceptual level, what is expected of all students (the standards), and to understand the process for customizing that curriculum for each student. Then they were shown how to collect data and to document a student's progress learning targeted skills in the student's portfolio that gets used in the school, and later submitted to the state as an alternate assessment. A key ingredient to the State of Massachusetts' success has been a coordinated message about alternate assessment from a unified state leadership. The "1% rule" has given schools an even greater incentive to educate these students in their local schools, and to take the alternate assessment seriously.