Showcase: Online Professional Development for

Improved Selection, Implementation, and

Evaluation of Accommodations

Sheryl Lazarus and Michael MooreNational Center on Educational Outcomes

University of Minnesota

Nannette PenceAlabama State Department of Education

Student Assessment Office

1. IntroductionSheryl Lazarus

(National Center on Educational Outcomes)

2. State Overview Nannette Pence

(Alabama Department of Education)

3. Accommodations Online Training Michael Moore

(National Center on Educational Outcomes)

Multi-State GSEGConsortium Members

3

Alabama

Tennessee

HawaiiSouth

Dakota Wisconsin

4

Each member of the consortium shares a common interest in investigating the characteristics of low performing students with disabilities, and each of the states is dedicated to building a solid foundation that seeks to improve both instruction and assessment for this group of students.

5

Persistently Low

Performance

Accommodations Practices

(AL, SD, TN)

Nature of Instruction Received

(SD, TN, WI)Effects of Learning

Progressions(HI)

The Alabama FocusAccommodation Practices: Recent studies have shown that the provision of accommodations is variable across students, classrooms, and schools depending on the accommodations, educational context, and a student’s demographic characteristics (Altman, et al., 2010).

6

The Alabama FocusAccommodation Practices:

Finizio (2008) found that a student’s assessment accommodations more frequently mirror

accommodations used for instruction in the past.However,

Teachers often still are unclear on the definition and use of certain

accommodations (Byrnes, 2008).

7

Accommodations: Results of a Survey of Alabama Special Education

Teachers

Between March and May of 2009, 2,336 special education teachers in the state of Alabama were surveyed about the factors and considerations affecting accommodation decisions for instruction and assessment.

8

The Training Features 5 Modules

Module 1 – Thinking about student characteristicsModule 2 – Linking student needs to accommodation decisions

Module 3 – Instructional AccommodationsModule 4 – Assessment AccommodationsModule 5 – Monitoring and Evaluation

9

Literature Review on Successful Professional Development

NCEO sought to make sure our online training was developed with careful consideration for what the literature says about effective teacher professional development.

Literature Review on Successful Professional DevelopmentFindings included:

1. Effective teacher Professional Development must be connected to teacher’s context and practice.

Case Based Instruction in the form of case studies that are written as rich narratives of real-life teacher practice, are sometimes more appealing to teachers than only content instruction.

Literature Review on Successful Professional Development2. Effective teacher Professional Development should

provide teachers an opportunity to APPLY what they have learned. 

For more, see NCEO’s Synthesis Report #84, Professional Development to Improve Accommodations Decisions -- A Review of the Literature

nceo.info/OnlinePubs/Synthesis84/SynthesisReport84.pdf

The training can be found at https://

nceo.umn.edu/alabama

To begin your free login account, go to

https://nceo.umn.edu/alabama/userJoin.php

The Alabama Online Accommodations Training

The Alabama Online Accommodations Training

14

NCEO YouTube ChannelAll the videos can be found on NCEO’s YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnvPMaguIvwYqWrBSgZKlUA/videos

For more information:

16

NCEO - Sheryl Lazarus

laza0019@umn.edu

NCEO – Michael Moore

moore031@umn.edu

ALSDE - Nannette Pence

npence@alsde.edu