School Administrator's Manual 2008

Regents Examinations, Regents Competency Tests, and Second Language Proficiency Examinations

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Section Seven: Appendixes

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Appendix III

Rescheduling Option Available to Schools Administering RCTs to Students with Disabilities

High school students with disabilities occasionally encounter difficulties when they are scheduled to take more than one State assessment in one day during a given Regents Examination period. Many students with disabilities are provided "extended time" as a testing accommodation required by their IEP or 504 Plan. Some students with disabilities may want to take both a Regents Examination and its corresponding RCT during the same Regents Examination period. A scheduling concern arises when the student who is permitted extended time is to be administered more than one test in a single day.

To address such concerns, the school should consider several options:

Postpone one of the tests until the next Regents Examination period during which it is scheduled to be administered (e.g., the following August or January in the case of a June examination). The examination to be postponed should be in a content area in which the student will continue to receive instruction (and in which retention of information is thus a less critical concern). Schools are encouraged to provide review and preparation time to the student prior to any examination(s) postponed due to scheduling concerns.
Take a Department-approved alternative to the State examination. Available in some content areas as equivalent to the corresponding State examination, these alternatives include, among others, certain titles of the SAT I and II, and Advanced Placement Tests. Some of these alternative examinations are offered several times a year and on dates that do not conflict with State examinations. The list of Department-approved alternative examinations appears as Appendixes I and II of this manual.
Reschedule an RCT to the next available school day during the same test administration period on which the student has no other State examinations scheduled. This option may be made available only to the student whose IEP or 504 Plan requires extended time as a testing accommodation and who is scheduled to take an RCT on the same day as another State examination. This option is not permitted for Regents Examinations. The administration of all Regents Examinations must occur on the date indicated on the official schedule distributed by the Office of State Assessment. (See http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/testing/sched.html for schedules for upcoming examination periods.)
The requirements for implementing the rescheduling of an RCT are as follows:
- The school may reschedule the RCT to the next available school day during the same examination period on which the student has no other State examinations scheduled. The RCT may be rescheduled only to a time after the regularly scheduled date for that test's administration (not earlier than the date originally scheduled by the Department). For example, if the RCT is scheduled for the third day of testing, and the student is scheduled to take another State examination on that date, the RCT can be moved to the fourth day (not the first or second day) of that testing week. At the school's discretion, the scheduled rating day at the end of the examination period may be used as the alternate date if the RCT is ordinarily scheduled for the last day of testing and the student is scheduled to take another State examination on that date.
- Only scheduling conflicts involving other State assessments may be taken into account in determining a student's eligibility for this option. The same-day administration of locally developed or other assessments do not constitute a permissible basis for rescheduling RCTs.
- To maintain test security, the student, the student's parents and the school administrator are required to sign the three security forms appended as Attachments 1a, 1b, and 1c, certifying that the student did not have access to any of the specific content of the test prior to taking it.
- No official test score may be entered into the student's permanent record for an RCT rescheduled in accordance with the procedures outlined in this memorandum until all three required security certificates have been completed and signed by all appropriate parties and have been placed in the school's files. These forms must be retained as part of the school's special education file in the individual student's records.
- The school implementing this option must notify the Department of its decision to do so by completing and submitting a copy of Attachment 2, the "Notification of Rescheduled RCT" to VESID's Central Administration Regional Support Services Unit. The form must be submitted via fax (518-473-5769) no later than two weeks prior to the scheduled test administration. This option will help reduce scheduling difficulties for students with disabilities. For questions about this scheduling option or about a student's eligibility for the RCT Safety Net, contact VESID's Special Education Policy Unit by telephone at 518-473-2878. For additional information about testing programs and schedules, please see the Office of State Assessment web site at: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa/.