(Transcript of the April 11, 2001 Teleconference)

Transmitted via satellite, produced by the New York State Education Department and the New York State Satellite Broadcast Network; recorded at the studios at Bulmer Telecommunications Center, Hudson Valley Community College.

For additional information, call or write:

John Quinn
Room 668 EBA
Office of Curriculum and Instruction
New York State Education Department
Albany, NY 12234
(518) 474-3954
E-mail: jquinn@mail.nysed.gov

>> Rochelle: It can't be said often enough that the New York State learning standards and assessments are for all children, even for the estimated 11% of students who have disabilities. Nationally, we know that approximately 1 to 3% of all students have severe cognitive disabilities that make those assessments inappropriate for them. For that special population, New York State has developed an alternate assessment, the topic of today's "Tools for Schools."

(Music)>> Rochelle: Hello. I'm Rochelle Cassella. Welcome to today's "Tools for Schools" program. This series of professional development programs for educators is produced by the New York State Education Department's Broadcast Network. Today's program is sponsored by VESID, the Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities.

In response to federal requirements and its own efforts to raise student achievement, the New York State Education Department and VESID have developed an alternative assessment for a small but very special population of students. Today we'll review those federal requirements; we'll describe the students who meet the criteria for taking the alternate assessment, and then we'll look at the alternate performance indicators and data portfolios used to collect information on students' progress. We'll also hear about the learning standards reference methodology used in the alternate assessment process by the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES and then we'll see that methodology being put into practice as we follow two students at Skaneateles High School, just outside of Syracuse, as those students go through their school day.

As we progress through the program, please keep in mind our six tools for schools, those elements basic to all successful schools no matter their size, geographic location or amount of financial resources.

Our tools: Responsive leadership, ongoing staff development, flexible resources, engaging curriculum, parent and community involvement and comprehensive planning.

Why develop an alternate assessment? How did New York State go about developing its statewide alternate assessment program? Who takes the exam and what do the alternate performance indicators look like? For that background information, I turn to Candace Shyer. Candace is Supervisor for Special Education Policy at the New York State Education Department.

Candy, welcome.>> Thank you.>> Rochelle: Tell us a little bit about why we went and developed an alternate assessment.>> I think to begin that conversation we need to not only look back at New York State's history regarding the development of the learning standards for all students, but we also need to look at what was happening federally in the federal requirements.

I do have a few slides to share with people to set that kind of background and first talk about those federal requirements. The federal requirements were indeed changed in 1997 with the reauthorization of IDEA. Some of those really looked at factors to do with the federal requirements or the federal regulations, but also in New York State, our "all" meaning all for all students and the fact that we want to improve student performance for all students in the State of New York based on these new higher learning standards and really assess the skills and knowledge of all of our students, from those at the top end of our scale to those students who are cognitively impaired and more of a challenge to assess skills and knowledge.

The next slide talks about those federal requirements, where the states were required by federal law to develop goals and indicators for all students really, but those goals and indicators particularly for students with disabilities need to be consistent with the goals that we have and standards that we set for all children in our states.

The second piece is a federal requirement that talks about states having to develop guidelines for the participation of those students in it, and the next piece that you see up here is the Committee on Special Education process which talks about the Individual Education Program, or what we have on the slide as the I.E.P. requirement, which include a committee deciding about those individual modifications and administration of assessments. But also there's decisionmaking point of the student's participation in assessments. Are they going to participate in each state and local assessment must be on the I.E.P., and if not, why not must be on the I.E.P. if the child is not going to participate, and indeed then how the child will be assessed must be on the I.E.P. itself.

>> Rochelle: So it's up to the Committee on Special Ed then to determine if this child will take the regular or the general ed state assessments or if there will be an alternate assessment?

>> That's correct. In fact, that's a major changing point with the IDEA now, and I'm talking about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act when I say IDEA, because now we have two ways that a committee can make its decision. Students are no longer exempted from the assessment process, but they are participating in those regular state assessments, perhaps with testing accommodations, or they are participating in the state's alternate assessment. And those are the only two assessments that a child can participate in, the two choices.

>> Rochelle: What about -- how did we go about developing what the alternative assessment will be like?

>> Actually, our work began much earlier than when the federal law was changed. We began with an advisory group, and I have a slide to put up for this that talks about the advisory group which began in 1995. We first examined those learning standards that we had just gone through in New York in developing and we looked at them relative to students was severe disabilities.

Did these standards actually apply to these students or not was an important point for our advisory committee to struggle with. And we came to a conclusion: Yes, they did apply. We just needed to talk about access into those indicators. And what we did as an advisory group was to develop key ideas; we developed alternate performance indicators for those students and sample tasks very similar to the work that was done looking at the elementary performance indicators, the intermediate and the commencement level. We developed an alternate level, so we could truly look at where should these students be accomplishing? What level is appropriate for them?

>> Rochelle: How do we determine then which students -- for whom the alternate assessment is appropriate?

>> The next step we did was we needed to go into the development of an actual task force to look at how we assess now. We developed the performance indicators, but we developed a task force of educators again, researchers, parents, advocates. There was everybody at the table because you need to engage everybody. These students are not just students in public schools but are at our BOCES, private approved schools, state-operated, state-supported schools, approved private schools. The students are everywhere. So it was important to engage everyone in the conversation.

We also put out what we call a request for proposal and got a testing contractor. That testing contractor was Advanced Systems. Now their company has been renamed Measured Progress since that time. With that group, we developed guiding principles, process and participation criteria, performance tasks, the national scoring rubric. And that took us quite a bit of time to make our way through that particular piece. In fact, the next part we should probably move into is the actual talking about the process and participation criteria.

Unique to New York, we decided we needed to first talk about what's the process that we should be using in making our decisions? And then the next thing we knew, because of the federal requirement, was we needed to talk about participation criteria: Who should participate, an exact criteria to help committees make their decision.

In the next slide, you'll see some of the process criteria. This is what a Committee on Special Education, or C.S.E., uses in making a determination. First of all, most important thing for us is still it's decided on an individual basis. And the best people to make that decision is the membership of that committee. That includes a very strong family component, especially for this population of students but for all students with disabilities. They're going to go looking at the student's needs and student's abilities and they're going to develop an I.E.P. of that Individualized Education Program which fully documents what that child's needs are and the fact that they need to be working on the alternate performance indicator level of a learning standard.

They're going to look at those recommendations based on the historical data, the qualitative, quantitative information from that data. And those decisions, and this next slide shows you that, should not be based on a category of disability of a child. You're not going to say that a child just because they're mentally retarded or autistic belongs in taking alternate assessment. It should not be based on the disability category. It shouldn't be because the child has had a lot of extensive absences. That wouldn't lead you to necessarily mean then that this child should take the alternate, or that there are language or cultural differences with this child should not be factors in making this determination.

And lastly, the committee continues to need to follow federal and state guidelines and policy when it comes to implementing any kinds of testing procedures with students with disabilities.

The next slide is the participation criteria, and this is the criteria that actually is where the rubber meets the road for the committee. This is how they're going to decide whether a student should participate in the alternate assessment. They have done all that work now ahead of time of looking at evaluative information, the student's strengths and needs, involving the family in this, and now we look at who should be participating. If a student with a severe cognitive disability, which really is a small population within our students with disabilities, and these are students with significant deficits in communication and language and adaptive behavior, they require very highly specialized programs and have a tremendous amount of supports within their educational system in order to make their I.E.P. really work.

>> Rochelle: Okay.

>> So that slide shows you those kinds of participation criteria that our committees are using.

>> Rochelle: Okay. So what does the assessment look like? How do we determine the performance indicators? We know what other students need to do. How do we --

>> That's the next step. The committee has made its decision about the student and who should participate in that alternate assessment, and I think what people are most interested in learning about is the assessment itself.

If we could talk about this for a few minutes broadly, the alternate assessment will measure progress on the state learning standards and on the alternate performance indicators. We're going to measure students' progress in certain four key areas. I know this is not up there on the slide, but when I say these areas to you, you're probably going to be sitting there nodding at me because they're in such alignment with how we measure progress for all students: English language arts, mathematics, science, social studies. Occupational studies is an optional piece of the alternate assessment.

So you've got those four key components and an additional fifth that might be in the actual alternate assessment.

Another piece, which makes it in full alignment with the same assessment program we have for all students in New York State is that we're going to measure students at the same ages as their regular peers would be.

>> Rochelle: Okay.

>> Their peers actually were students with disabilities who are participating in the regular assessment system, which is fourth, eighth and high school, except for in this case it will be ages nine/ten, which is about when a student is in fourth grade. We'll measure again at ages 13 and 14 and at 16 and 17.

If we could put that slide back up again that we were just looking at with the demonstration of progress toward the learning standards, the next piece is using a variety of means to demonstrate performance, and this is a piece where we're using multiple products, so we say, to gather information about a student. You could be looking at videos. You could be looking at audiotapes, actual work products themselves. There's multiple things: Surveys, observations...

And I want to go back to the survey for a minute because the survey is an interesting piece because it involves families and caretakers and what is that student demonstrating at home? Parents are actually surveyed about what's going on in the home setting or a caretaker may be surveyed about how they are demonstrating skills across the settings.

>> Rochelle: Because they don't just want it in the classroom; we want this behavior elsewhere.

>> Absolutely. So it's another key piece. If we go back to the slide, there's another piece of this. We're talking about direct performance assessment for students. This begins with standards-based instruction. That's a very important element we feel in this entire piece, that teachers are teaching that strong instruction based on the learning standard for all of our students with disabilities.

>> Rochelle: All rightie. And how do we go about grading or scoring or evaluating --

>> Right. Because now what we're talking about is a data folio. One of the hardest things is to really work on that scoring and scoring rubric. For the data folio, we are going to have a scoring rubric, and there are certain components to that scoring rubric itself. Those components will look at performance of a student, the connection to the standards that the student is looking at, the self-advocacy, settings themselves, and when I'm talking about settings, we're talking about that piece you just mentioned before, that students need to practice skills and show them in the classroom, at home, in the community, in vocational settings, maybe other places within their school building.

The last element we look at in our scoring rubric is social interaction. Is the student just interacting with adult cues and prompts or is this student doing sustained, multiple interactions without any prompts or cues? In fact, one of the strongest pieces to this rubric itself is that it's based on, again, measurement of the learning standards and the alternate performance indicators. It's on a scale of 1 to 4, which is very similar to the 4th and 8th grade assessments.

I know we do have some filmage with someone actually talking about this a little more.

>> Rochelle: Yes, we do. Claire Colella, she's the Special Education Supervisor for the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES in Central New York, and she explains a little bit about what goes into the data folio and how the rubrics work for the alternate assessments.

>> The data folio is a collection of the students' work that shows how they are pursuing the New York State learning standards. And there are a variety of different entries that may be used in the data folio. The teacher or team can submit student written work, and this work could look like a work sheet in either print form or a work sheet that uses pictures. They could submit a videotape that shows the child actually performing a specific skill that is standards-referenced. They could use photographs as entries, and this could show a child actually in the context of instruction. So, for example, if you were trying to show the child working cooperatively within groups, you could take a photograph of that child surrounded by peers, working on a specific project.

You could submit audiotapes, and this would be particularly helpful if you're working on an E.L.A. standard like teaching the child to state his name and address or trying to improve conversational skills with nondisabled peers. That would be a neat way to show that, through an audiotape.

Also systematic instructional data that is taken by staff. This would be in the form of either a checklist or data sheet that then could be either charted or graphed and that is used, again, consistently on a daily basis to show the child's performance in a variety of skills all related to the standards.

Within the rubric, it is looking at several different areas, beginning with performance, on how well is the student actually performing the skill? It could begin with the lowest score, which would be a starting score, and that would be if the student needs a lot of physical or hand-over-hand assistance to participate in a particular skill.

And moving on from there, we would be looking at is the child now able to perform the skill with perhaps just a modeled cue? And from there, can the student then initiate the skill on their own? And, finally, for a score of 4, is the child able to generalize that skill, out of a more routine situation into a new situation?

And then from there, Rochelle, we look at the connection to standards, and within that data folio, we look at the work that the student is doing and we're looking to see is there a clear link between what the data folio products are showing and the New York State standards. And you get a lower score if that linkage or connection is seen perhaps only to one standard or one alternate performance indicator. You would receive a much higher score if you could show that the student is working on skills that relate to an extensive variety of standards and alternate performance indicators.

And then from there, the rubric also looks at the child's ability, the student's ability to self-advocate. So we're going to be looking for the many opportunities for the student to make choices, either opportunities for the student to participate in a variety of self-evaluation systems where they're looking at their own performance and monitoring it and perhaps making a plan to improve it.

>> Rochelle: The Cayuga Onondaga BOCES has a long history of working collaboratively with parents to identify the most important educational learning outcomes for their child as they develop and implement student I.E.P.s and programs. Their process is consistent with federal regulations and facilitates the development of standards-referenced I.E.P.s which provide the foundation of the evidence submitted in the alternate assessment data folio.

Their project, planning and implementing a standards-referenced curriculum for students with moderate to severe disabilities, is modeled after the nationally recognized Choosing Options and Accommodations for CHildren first developed by Michael Giangreco with the BOCES and simply known as COACH.

With us today is Al Sabin, the SETRC Coordinator for the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES. Al, welcome.

>> Hi.

>> Rochelle: Tell us a little bit about the methodology used in the program you have.

>> I think the important thing is that for almost 20 years, we have a single belief that families are critical in decisionmaking for the children, for all students, but obviously for this population of children specifically.

Our process involves ongoing communication and conversations with parents, but specifically, usually in the spring at annual review time, we're going to talk with the educational team in the school, with the families, and look at identifying what are the present levels of performance of the child and begin talking about what kind of annual goals we may be looking at for the following year.

I think there's a slide I brought that talks about the beginning of this process in working with families to ask them to describe for us who is their child and giving us phrases that help us understand exactly what they want for their child, what are their long-term hopes and dreams for their child, and also what are their fears. Those are critical things to be thinking about as we're establishing goals and objectives that lead us to what would be the learning outcomes we want for children?

Then, importantly also, to identify what are the strengths the child brings to us in relationship to the following areas: Academic strengths, communication strengths, socialization, self-help and functional skills as well as physical strengths. If you think about those, all of those are related to what? To the standards. So it really puts us in line with that.

One of the things that the alternate assessment does is, as Candy described in the rubric, is it allows families and teachers and children in some cases to assess themselves, again, against a continuum of progress in meeting the standards.

>> Rochelle: I know that there's an emphasis in your program on standard-referenced, standards-based. What --

>> Right. The next slide, I think, talks about the next step in this process, which is to look at each of the standards based on the desired outcomes. For English language arts, in the case of one of the students we're going to see in a few minutes, Patty, the family identified three of the priorities under that: Information for understanding, for critical analysis and for social interactions. They also identified -- the next slide -- health and physical education, under that personal health. So each of these... we can go through these slides, which led us to an outcome. One more, please.

We looked at two specific standards that we could combine, and for Patty it was recognizing intricate patterns, and you'll hear about that described in the video, and also following a personal schedule. So the next slide shows that the teacher and the parent took those two standards and alternate indicators and combined them into one annual goal that would be listed on the I.E.P. And that for Patty was that in school, community locations, she'll be able to use models, templates and a variety of clerical tools to complete a basic office task. So in this example, we have referenced Patty's goals to the state standards and alternate indicators.

>> Rochelle: So how does that actually come together? Does somebody sit there with a list of activities, --

>> Exactly.

>> Rochelle: -- a list of standards that basically says --

>> Exactly. There's a guide that's been developed that leads the teachers and the families through this. And, again, one of the critical factors is having the parents understand the learning standards and understand how they fit into the overall program of their child.

So it's a kind of sequenced process of a grid of going through, taking from a large area of knowledge that we have about the child and breaking it up and continually paring it down, if you will, in the most prioritized learning outcomes.

When we end up, you then have annual goals. But there also are a large number of learnings that have to take place in any classroom, that we call the breadth of curriculum. Those are the things that take place that we just generally teach to everybody, but for this child, they may not be the most important learning outcomes that we want to measure and ultimately assess in the alternate assessment process.

>> Rochelle: Okay. And they actually have a grid where it basically says what is the child's schedule all day long, what are the goals, what are the standards?

>> Yes.

>> Rochelle: There's a checklist, and I believe that's available in our Facilitator's Guide and will probably be available on our web site as well. We'll have that information for you.

Right now, let's see the alternate assessment at work. We followed two students in the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES program at Skaneateles High School throughout their typical day. Patty Harris, who is 18 years old, uses assistive technology for communication, but her day is rich with learning opportunities. Even lunch is a lesson for Patty. Here she is.

>> Hello. How are you?

>> Are you being silly?

>> Patty is almost 18, although she doesn't look it. She has a wonderful sense of humor. She can be very determined with some of her behaviors and attitudes, loves food, loves family and friends and can be a very big challenge sometimes.

>> Ready? Go. Push. Good job! Thank you.

>> Short term, to improve a lot of her own personal skills: Dining skills, personal hygiene skills, recreation, social interaction.

>> Patty, what would you like for your extra today? Pretzel, banana or salad?

>> When Patty goes into the cafeteria, she stops and makes a choice for what additional snack she wants to have with her lunch, and then have her stand in line, wait patiently with peers, not to throw things on the floor, and then pay for that purchase and then to go to the table.

>> For students with severe disabilities, I think it's essential that they have opportunities to practice skills in a large variety of settings. Typical students can generalize a learned -- a piece of information they have learned in class to other environments.

Every moment of every day for our students is a lesson, is an opportunity, is a teachable moment I think is the phrase a lot of people use. We have to take full advantage of every one of them. So for Patty at lunch, it became a wonderful opportunity for her to implement almost all of the vocational, career goals, as far as looking at being able to be independent and purchasing. Going through the lunch line for her is an independent purchasing activity, being able to communicate, express wants and needs, make choices. Again, with assistive technology, which is essential for her, it allowed her to participate and to make decisions.

>> Your milk.

>> When she is eating in the cafeteria, we're really looking at her to develop more appropriate dining skills, more like those of her peers, to not take food from others, to scoop at a reasonable pace, you know, to really be okay with dining in the cafeteria.

>> Again, Patty, working on the standards, to initiate conversation in the lunchroom with her friend Elissa, she uses the Big Mack to do that.

>> What did you do today?

>> I used the hole punch.

>> In the past, we have worked on that with students, but really now with the alternate assessment coming, we really need to make sure that all students are involved in self-evaluation, to really understand what part they play in their program, what they're doing, what's the end product for them?

>> The importance of them taking a role in "How did I do today?," for many students with disabilities, that's really, really different. So we have to be thoughtful about how do we have them in any way be participatory in self-evaluation? Self-evaluation is self-advocacy.

>> We also want to see Patty going down to the main office to do a school job, take the Big Mack with her, looking at the E.L.A. standards to initiate a conversation. She makes a request for mail, makes a request for work. Today's task, she did some hole punching while she was there.

In her I.E.P. goals, it asks for longer and longer durations that she actually participates in that. We're really working towards independence for that, so not only are we increasing the duration, but we're looking for some independence while she's doing that. She needs to develop solid job skills for when she leaves high school.

>> We were developing the I.E.P. goal, and I felt that we could combine these two skills.

Using the standards, reference-based I.E.P., we use a parent process where we sit down and we discuss with the parents the skills that the student can do, what we would like them to be able to do and how it relates to the standards. The parent, as the key decisionmaker, chooses the type of activities they would like that student or their child to be involved in. From there, we develop goals that reflect those standards that the parents chose.

In school and community locations, Patty will use models, templates and a variety of clerical tools to complete basic office tasks. It's something that Patty can work towards successfully.

We work with the parents which will then determine what standards most appropriately reflect where we want a student to go in their learning.

>> Throughout the year, I'm in the classroom fairly regularly. There's a lot of communication between school and home and therapists, teachers, aids, so that when we get to the annual meeting, it's not really a lot of new information and new ideas; it's just an ongoing process. But I have always felt it was my right and responsibility as a parent to be involved.

>> And then we look at each individual item listed by the state and all the activities, "Is this a vehicle to get our student, our child, to where we want them to go?"

We have highlighted these areas and you and I are going to walk through the standards and read these items together.

>> Sometimes I'll think she'll never achieve that, but when you sit down with the staff you realize that by breaking things down into smaller steps, some of these goals that we didn't think she would ever achieve are reachable, if not fully at least in part. She can unzip her jacket herself; she can pull the sleeves off. If really interested, she'll hang on to it and hand it to you instead of dropping it on the floor. But there was a time when I thought I would be doing every bit of dressing and undressing with her.

>> This is a good one to include on the alternate assessment.

>> We have data collection points for you to look at the success of the I.E.P. goals but then a place for the students. The data sheet is different between the student self-evaluations and those that I use to assess the student's mastery on an I.E.P.

So you just need to be really concrete in knowing their program and knowing what they're looking for for a student. What is their outcome they're looking for and how does it relate back to the standards?

>> I think teaching has changed a lot. I think teaching has changed from looking at just what we're doing at the moment and how it fits into a much larger picture of what we want kids to be as they begin to think about exiting school.

>> There needs to be a standard across the board and for other people who may not have had some of the fortunate circumstances that we have had, and I think they do need to be able to document how goals are being met or approached for kids who have severe disabilities.

>> Rochelle: We kind of saw it all right there, didn't we?

>> I know. Wasn't that exciting? I tell you what I think is exciting when I look at something like that, that it began with conversations that took place with her family and with the teacher, and we're talking about what should Patty be working on, what skills does she need to be working on?

The other thing that's exciting to me, though, is to see that the skills are linked to the learning standards and they're being practiced across multiple settings, as we saw her in the classroom, saw her in other parts of the school building, and I know that Patty is also working on this stuff in other settings beyond what we're able to see today.

>> Rochelle: It really basically says everything that we have been talking about, that linking through with the accommodation of everybody at Cayuga Onondaga BOCES.

Al, what will be in Patty's data folio?

>> Patty's data folio will be interesting because obviously there's not going to be a lot of written work; there's not going to be a lot of written products. Since she isn't able to develop those, it's going to be rich in video, perhaps photographic evidence. It will rely a lot on teacher data collection sheets that they have completed. Also some self-evaluation things that we're working with Patty to teach her about. That works toward the self-advocacy part of the rubric.

Then also, very clearly, the input and feedback of parents. One of the components of the data folio is a parent survey. It's a very critical piece to talk about how Patty generalizes these skills not just in school but in her home and other community settings. If we look back in some of that parent interview that we did at the beginning with Patty's mom, she talked about long-range goals and objectives of where Patty would be living, how would she be able to -- what level of independence would she be able to have, and how would she be able to be communicating with other folks once she left school? So all of those things should be critical in how we look at the kind of evidence we put in the data folio.

>> Rochelle: Okay. Our next student we're going to look at is Matt. Tell us a little bit about Matt.

>> Matt is 17. He currently resides in a group home. For his needs -- at this point, he and his family have decided that's the best place for him to be. He loves his family. He has every opportunity to go and visit them and spend time with them. At this point, he's very, very close to his classmates. He's a helper in the classroom. In some sense we look at Matt as a severe disability, but there are some students in the room with even more severe disabilities, and within the school, and Matt enjoys the opportunity to work with them.

His program is centered around a number of annual goals that are referenced to standards: Following multistep directions, using coins and bills, reading functional sight words, sustaining conversations, participating in physical fitness activities, and accepting and implementing corrections, which for Matt is a big issue.

>> Rochelle: (Chuckling) Well, let's take a look. In our day with Matt, we see him working on all of these goals as he does his school job of distributing attendance sheets to various classrooms and in a grocery shopping trip to the local P&C.

>> Hello. All right. Yeah...

I got it.

>> He travels from room to room with a friend that he made in the hallway, and now they meet up every day to do the attendance together. In some rooms -- he has to understand his part; when he enters into a room, if there's instruction going on, he needs to be quiet. Or if the teacher is speaking to him, instead of ignoring that teacher, to just leave and ignore that initiation, he'll actually respond.

>> You've got one for everybody today?

>> Yes.

>> The learning standards really lay out tasks, individual tasks, and within a routine you can embed many other standards and skills and put it together and have a really meaningful program for Matthew to participate in. You can include many different sorts of skills.

>> Mom, Dad...

>> You have a nice weekend, okay?

>> Okay.

>> Looking at English language arts, communications, with Standard 1 and also Standard 4...

>> For Matt, in some cases it's easy for him to communicate with the people in his classroom, with his peers and with his teachers. But for a long period of time, Matthew wasn't able to communicate with others. So taking that out of the safe environment of the classroom and then going into his school jobs, where he was going from classroom to classroom, office to office, having to meet new people and in some cases substitutes who don't know Matthew when he goes in, being able to generalize those skills and come up with "How do I deal with this person who I don't know today?"

>> Looking at simple maps when he first was learning the school, following simple maps.

>> Two, three, four, five...

>> In most cases he has to count out how many he needs, so there's one-to-one correspondence, so you're looking at the math standard to actually do that job skill.

>> Those are all standards of learning that were identified in Matt's I.E.P. that were then placed into his instructional program.

>> It costs $1 but what is it? Salad --

>> Salad dressing.

>> Tell me one more time?

>> Salad dressing.

>> You're absolutely right.

>> Matt's been working on a functional reading vocabulary. We work with him to look through the sale fliers for the particular stores to be able to help identify those items, estimate their costs and then to actually locate those items.

What are we going to need to buy?

If you're making a grilled cheese sandwich, what are the items that you need? Are any of those items in the flier that are on sale? If so, how much are they? If not, what items are you missing? What do you need to get?

He's doing interactions so if he can't find something in the store, he can ask a person who works there. When he gets to the cashier, to speak with them and to be able to hand them the correct number of bills that he's been asked to get.

>> 4.26.

>> 4.26. What's the next dollar after 4?

>> 5.

>> Nice job.

>> He was practicing and being assessed in E.L.A.; math, science and technology; C-DOS, Career Development Occupational Studies. He also had to include some help in physical function activities, getting on and off the bus. Those are activities for Matt which are important. Weight is a problem with Matt, so any time we can get him to exercise, to walk, to go from place to place, that's a good experience for him as well. So it wasn't a simple thing of "Let's go to the store and buy some salad." It was, "Let's practice a significant number of important skills that are relevant to your learning."

>> Matt, when you're done putting those things away, can you come next door?

>> Yes.

>> Okay, great. Thank you.

>> After purchasing the items, he brings them back, puts them away, and then at a later date, even later that day, there's a food prep class where he'll make that item.

>> Did you pay for all your items?

>> Yeah.

>> Put that there. What do you think? Did you do a good job today?

>> Yep.

>> For students with severe disabilities, it's essential that they have an opportunity to practice skills in a large variety of settings. Typical students can generalize a learned -- a piece of information they have learned in class to other environments. Our students don't. They need practice. They need multiple opportunities to practice in as many new environments as is possible. So by looking at school jobs, community activities, experiences within a number of settings, Matt has the opportunity to practice and to be evaluated and be able to know and be secure in his knowledge of "I can do this."

>> Rochelle: He sure did do a good job that day. He was great!

>> Charming, isn't he?

>> Rochelle: Isn't he wonderful? We have really seen a lot going on here.

>> We're now looking at a student who is actually demonstrating multiple standards and performance indicators, and his instruction is very, very rich in what's going on, but also he knows now how many areas of the school building he's involved in and in his community. He is practicing those skills and demonstrating those things. At home, he's also showing us, as well as in the classroom, in the school building, out in the community setting.

One other thing struck me when we were looking at this piece and that's also his involvement with his nondisabled peers. That's a very important part of Matt's program.

>> Rochelle: The young man who joined Matt on his morning rounds, tell us about him, Al.

>> Well, it's an interesting story. One of Matt's biggest goals is accepting direction from adults, and Matt also -- I talked a little bit about his physical endurance. Matt doesn't like to exert himself a whole lot. It's a long way from one end of the building to the other. And one day it happened that Matt was having a conflict with his teacher about how fast or how much he should continue in his task, and Greg came along and just kind of walked over and said, "Hi, friend. How you doing? What's going on today? What's the problem?" And Matt just lit up and just the two of them took off. We don't ask where Greg comes from because we really don't want to know that! But Greg just shows up at the most wonderful times and seems just to be a friend. It was something that was initiated by him, not by anybody who set it up. Those are the things that you could never set up. They have to be genuine and unique.

>> Rochelle: The way it should be.

>> Yes.

>> Rochelle: You have also talked about how this is a real significant growth for Matt. This is not the Matt who first came to you.

>> No, Matt came to us when he was age five, and if you look at Matt's day when he was age five, his day consisted of people controlling his behavior, of working with him and trying to get him to just be able to be with other people and very honestly to the point where he couldn't be. His day was spent in a lot of one-on-one with adults. Matt -- and there was not a lot of, if you would say, instruction in the general curriculum taking place. It was really a behavior management program for him.

But over time with a lot of dedicated people and a lot of really hard work, of breaking down tasks, of looking at what his long-term needs were, supports with all of the folks in Matt's life that we work with, you see a child now who has a lot of opportunities for learning.

I'm so impressed when I see him count money and I see him be able to use it and when a staff says, "What's the next dollar up?," he has a strategy now for being able to use those skills.

>> Especially his social interactions, meeting the L.A. standards in that area, that he has really moved to a very high level with.

>> And the adults in the building have accepted him for who he is.

>> Rochelle: That's wonderful. Great.

>> It's a compliment to them.

>> Rochelle: Very good. A compliment to everybody who worked with him.

How can you make it happen in your school? Well, a review now of our tool tips from Claire, Randy and Al.

(Music)

>> I think first it's very important for our special education teachers to have an understanding that the New York State standards are the same for all students, including students with disabilities.

>> We have teachers beginning to think about learning outcomes for kids, but we also create environments in schools where all educators, special educators and general educators, are speaking the same words, the same knowledge, and they're talking about learning outcomes that are consistent for all students.

>> I think the process would be most easily facilitated if, number one, teachers were educated on what the standards are, teachers and families, if they had a full understanding of the standards and the alternate performance indicators. I think that is really crucial.

>> Really take the time to get to know the student's parents and their desires and what they want for the outcomes for their child. You'd be working upstream if you didn't work with a parent. If you have one thought or idea for a student and they have another, how can you come to consensus to, you know, make sure that everybody's needs are satisfied? Nobody knows a child like a parent. They know what they can truly do.

>> There needs to be a line of follow-up and a lot of support. One thing we're planning for our teachers for the coming year is to develop study groups where we have teachers at the elementary, middle school and secondary level to meet together to brainstorm and share ideas with each other.

>> The alternate assessment and the learning standards have impacted the way that I instruct. I need to be really organized in what I'm doing for instruction. I can't just jump from one type of activity to another with no in between. So teachers need to be really concrete in knowing their program and knowing what they're looking for for a student. What is the outcome they're looking for and how does it relate back to the standards?

Take Patty, for instance. Some of the skills listed in the standards are tough. Patty can't master them as written. So we look at access skills. So when you're looking at that, you need to break that down and understand it yourself. What portions can Patty do? And eventually how can we put this together for her to master that standard?

>> Combining standards, a blending, learning outcomes with an instructional task. So again, we have given examples of how in the community we saw Matt in the shopping experience. It wasn't just a math goal of purchasing and using money. It included E.L.A., of being able to articulate his thoughts to other people, make choices, and being able to utilize signs and information in the grocery store. All of those things tied into a variety of standards.

>> I need to make sure that every activity is thoroughly thought out and each portion of a child's day is meaningful to them and I'm able to answer very easily, "What do you guys do in there all day? You playing games?" No, actually we're not. We're working very hard. I like other educators to hear that we're hard at work and everything that we are doing is meaningful for these students.

>> Rochelle: Great faces. Great advice.

Candy, some other additional information or some resources that might be available for schools and school districts?

>> Sure. I know we went over some of them in this slide or the videoclip we just saw. I also have some additional slides we can walk through.

One of them begins with a piece we have already seen throughout all these segments, and that is really knowing about the learning standards and performance indicators. That's a piece that not only teachers and administrators but family needs to know about. It's very important, and we saw the family involvement very clearly at Cayuga Onondaga BOCES.

The second piece here is really developing those I.E.P.s that we went over slowly at first about developing strengths and looking at needs and looking at the goals and indicators, decisions about assessment. The second bullet here on the slide talks about developing standards-based I.E.P.s and making sure there's a breadth of curriculum activities that really support those standards-based I.E.P.s and are learning standards for all students.

The second or third piece down, educating families. Oh so critical in here is really bringing parents into the loop and families and caretakers because sometimes students are in other kinds of programs and may be at group homes or may be in an approved private school, a twelve-month program. So we need to educate our families and caretakers that are with our children and working with our children.

Integrating standards within an instructional routine: This is a piece that's a challenge for these students much more than students who are right in that regular fourth grade math curriculum. These are students who have to work hard at this, and not only that but working on multiple standards and multiple indicators within the instructional practice that you're doing is very vital to this.

Next one down, age-appropriate materials. At first actually we looked at this as part of what we wanted to put into the scoring rubric, but then we see it really is a piece we're saying to programs. We took it out of the scoring rubric and what we're saying to people now is that you need to be working with age-appropriate materials with students. What do we mean by that? If you have a student that's 16 or 17 years of age, this should not be a student that you see working in a preschool-level book but into materials that are age-appropriate for them. I saw that with Matt, where he was going and doing those things right at the grocery store and working on his math skills, but you can see that kind of activity that you work on for children when they're very young and which a parent may be going through a grocery store with them and showing them items on the shelf, and you can see that same activity when the child gets older and they are going to the grocery store maybe with a shopping list.

If we go back to the slide, some other things are offering many opportunities for a student to show these throughout their year and collecting evidence through the course of a whole year. I know the state's alternate assessment will really only measure three times, but we're encouraging districts to use the state's alternate assessment all the time. They can develop that or change it a little bit to fit their local needs, but they can use that as a local way of measuring continuously a student's progress.

Our next slide shows some other things that teachers and parents and educators can do: Teach students to self-advocate for themselves. We saw a lot of that within what we saw in the video segments with Cayuga Onondaga BOCES.

>> Rochelle: Yes.

>> Another part is involving the student in monitoring or evaluating their own performance. That can be as simple as pictures that they mark that they have completed an activity to things that have maybe some simple words on it that indicate to them that they have completed an activity and they are evaluating. "Did you do good?" "I did good today."

>> Rochelle: As with Matt.

>> The self-evaluation piece, I think, is critical to the whole discussion we're having because self-evaluation allows you to self-advocate. If you can't say how I'm doing or what I'm doing, how do you be able to express that to somebody else in that way?

>> Rochelle: Perfect.

>> Another piece, our slide again shows the appropriate adaptations or assistive technology. These are already indicated on a student's I.E.P., but it's important to provide those appropriately throughout the student's program. The piece that teachers need to look at is what activities may a student need to use those kinds of technology and adaptations for.

Another part is gathering evidence within the context of multiple setting: School, home, community activities, vocational settings and activities. You're going to gather assessments through all those locations, especially critical for this population of students.

And then collecting evidence every year, reviewing periodically and so on, also very critical in this stage, as we are engaging in that whole process of assessing students on the learning standards and performance indicators.

We do have some other tips, though, for schools, or some things coming up that we could offer to schools that both Al and I have been diligently working on. One of them is going to be a teachers' guide. As a teachers' guide, I like them to be very similar to -- we have the Standards and Alternate Performance Manual. In fact, I carry around a copy with me all the time!

>> The infamous green and black book.

>> Teachers and families and administrators can order through our Publications Office at the State Education Department, and they can also go on VESID's web site and download this document. That's one resource.

But we have the second piece coming out soon, and that's a resource for teachers that are actually conducting the alternate assessment. When we're finished with that, we're going to actually pilot it with our trainers in May, but we'll put it up on our web site as well and teachers who are trained in this will receive copies of the teachers' manual. We're excited about that because it's soup to nuts. We have put everything into this that a teacher needs to know to really do this state's alternate assessment.

Another piece is we have just released a field memo on the alternate assessment itself and sent information to our district superintendents and to superintendents in our big-five city school districts, and the field memo is very complete itself, including some of the stuff we saw with the participation process criteria. It also gives information about our upcoming training, which is probably the next biggest part we have in front of us.

Once again, Measured Progress, who is our contractor team, will be assisting us and Cayuga Onondaga BOCES to train people statewide. We're going to use a train the trainers model. Trainers have now been identified by the big-five city school districts and by the BOCES, and these trainers will come into Albany May 1st and May 2nd and they'll be trained in the alternate assessment. Their job or task then is to go back to their area where there will be follow-up satellite conferences in the fall, we hope somewhere in about the month of October, and that's where teachers will then be there. The trainers will be there regionally at the satellite downlink sites and the trainers will facilitate around that actual satellite program and that's how teachers will get a copy of the teachers' guide and will be trained themselves in October.

This begins a whole year next year for us of activities very similar to what you probably have talked about when it comes to other standards in that we've got scoring to do, training on scoring, rubrics, benchmarking work to do and so on.

>> Rochelle: Okay. We'll make sure that we help keep everybody posted about that information. Also materials used in today's program and that Cayuga Onondaga BOCES has available we'll have available on our web site.

That is all the time we have for today's program. My thanks to Candy and Al and to the teachers and the students of the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES program and to Skaneateles High School for its hospitality and to P&C as well.

If you have more questions about today's program, check out the VESID web site. It's at www.nysed.gov/vesid. If it's information about the "Tools for Schools" series you want, go to the Broadcast Network site at www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/satellite.html. While you're there, please complete our on-line survey because it helps us as we plan for next year's program.

Next month marks the last "Tools for Schools" program for the 2000/2001 school year. I can't believe it's over! It's an update on the social studies learning standards, and it airs Wednesday, May 9th from 3 to 4 p.m. on your local public television station. Our focus will be on developing and teaching document-based questions. We'll visit a museum in Binghamton offering elementary teachers considerable support in finding three-dimensional documents to work on; we'll see an inclusion class of 5th graders prepare for the D.B.Q. portion of the assessment, and we'll check into two New York City high school social studies classes. Again, that's Wednesday, May 9th at 3 p.m.

I'm Rochelle Cassella. Thank you for watching. Have a very good day.