Teaching students with learning disabilities effective study strategies is only one part of helping them reach their full potential. Teachers must also make sure that students acquire the required content objectives for each subject. Often, as Dr. Allsopp points out above, students with learning disabilities fall through the cracks as they get older and may not develop a full understanding of what they are learning.

Problems with Traditional Assessments

Todd Busch, an assistant professor of special education at the University of South Carolina, notes that in vocabulary- or jargon-oriented subjects such as science and social studies, students with LD often fail to grasp the concepts they are being taught. And because many already receive modifications, in the form of shorter tests or less complicated test questions, it is difficult for teachers to get an accurate measure of what they have learned.

For example, if a student with learning disabilities receives a multiple-choice test with only two answer choices instead of four or five, the format makes it easier for a student to guess the correct answer if he or she is unsure of the best choice.

Also, by using summative assessments, the norm in secondary school classes, teachers usually don't know if a student learned a unit's concepts until the unit test. And because a secondary-level curriculum's pace is often tightly structured, Dr. Busch points out that most teachers don't have time to remediate and re-teach concepts not mastered.

As a result, students with learning disabilities are usually given re-tests which are often made easier to ensure students will pass. But although a student's grade may reflect satisfactory achievement, in reality, the grade may not reflect whether the student has actually mastered the concepts and skills taught.

"Summative assessments don't allow a teacher to intervene until [students] fail," says Dr. Busch.

An Ongoing Measure

To come up with a more proactive way of ensuring that students with learning disabilities are acquiring content knowledge, Dr. Busch teamed up with the University of Minnesota's Christine Espin to develop curriculum-based measures for assessing secondary school students.

They designed a measure that involved matching content vocabulary words with their definitions. To perform this assessment, teachers pick about 20 words or phrases that will be presented during the semester- or year-long curriculum, create a matching test, and give students about 5 minutes to match as many as they know. This measure should be given about once a week. Often, particularly in the beginning of the year, students will not be able to match many definitions, but that is actually one strength of the measure.

"It's sensitive to changes over time and gives us feedback on how kids are learning. It helps teachers change instructional methods [if students are not learning content objectives]," says Dr. Busch. He and Dr. Espin tested the reliability and validity of the measure in inclusive middle school science and social studies classrooms. They concluded that the measure was "a good indicator of growth and knowledge in content-area courses." Students with learning disabilities made an average of 1 additional correct match every 2 weeks. If students are not getting an additional correct match every two weeks, teachers need to change their instructional methods to ensure those students are learning the material.

The next step in Dr. Busch's and Dr. Espin's research is to see if teachers can use the results of the measure to change instructional techniques. Plans are also underway to study the measure in high schools. Dr. Busch emphasizes that the measure is most reliable when it is used during units lasting 2 or 3 weeks. A curriculum unit that only lasts for a week is not enough time to get an accurate picture of student growth.

While this measure is not designed to replace traditional summative tests and other assignments, it serves as a valuable supplement. Says Dr. Busch: "It gives a better indication of how students are actually learning.

Copyright (c) 2002 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission.