Many states are struggling to meet a federal deadline to create alternative assessment systems for special education students and to decide which students should be tested using those alternatives, the survey found.

Under 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, states are required to include as many special education students as possible in regular assessments, with appropriate accommodations. Alternative assessments must be created for students judged to be unable to take regular tests. States also are required to monitor and make public the participation rates of students with disabilities taking assessments.

Currently, there are six million children served by IDEA in public schools.

States have until July 1 of this year to develop such alternative assessments, a spokesman for the U.S. Education Department’s office of special education programs said today.

"There’s a real range in how close states are to having that alternative assessment ready to go," Martha L. Thurlow, director of NCEO, said today. "Several states are really having to hustle to get this done." NCEO studies the participation of students with disabilities and limited-English proficient students in state and national assessments.

Nearly half of the 43 states that responded to the NCEO survey reported they were using the same standards, or some variation, as they did for regular students. Eight states were developing different standards; 14 had not decided what standards they would use.

"In most cases, the case is that while they are assessing students on the same standards, these students are not taking the same test," Thurlow said. "It’s not a paper-and-pencil test. It’s a portfolio, or a variety of measures, maybe talking to different people."

High stakes attached to school or district performance and lack of exposure of students with disabilities to test content are factors that inhibit greater participation of students with disabilities in assessment systems, the survey found.

"In my opinion, it is very important to have all children’s assessments reported," Thurlow said. "If you exclude some group, you have the potential for an unintended consequence. If you don’t report scores because of the perception that some students will perform more poorly than others, then the consequence may be you are tempted to put other students who may perform poorly in that group as well."

Meanwhile, a separate federal study by the National Center on Education Statistics estimated that at least half of all special-needs students were excluded from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1992 and 1994. Rules governing the national tests allow schools to exclude students they feel are incapable of taking the exams.

NCES is conducting a more detailed study on the 1998 NAEP to see whether the exclusion rates affected scores.

Natalie Carter Holmes, Editor