The Assessment of Students With Disabilities in Kentucky

In this paper, RAND and CRESST researcher Daniel Koretz reports his investigation of Kentucky’s efforts to include students with disabilities in the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS) assessment. Koretz’ findings suggest that Kentucky has successfully included nearly all students with disabilities in its regular statewide assessment program except those with the most serious disabilities. However, the quality of the Kentucky assessment results for students with disabilities was mixed. For example, fourth-grade students with disabilities had a disproportionally high percentage of disabled students who failed to try the mathematics questions or who scored zero on them, suggesting that this part of the assessment was too difficult for many students with disabilities. Other issues for the quality and comparability of results were the inconsistent use of assessment accommodations across grade levels, the sheer number of accommodations provided to students with disabilities, and apparently negative effects of some accommodations on the quality of the assessment results.