Database of Federally Funded Technical Assistance and Research Centers

The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) focuses on the inclusion of students with disabilities, English learners, and English learners with disabilities in instruction and assessments. The scope of NCEO’s work includes issues related to accessibility of assessments across the comprehensive assessment system including formative assessment practices, classroom-based assessments, diagnostic assessments, interim assessments, and summative assessments.

NCEO is a leader in advocating for appropriate testing access and accommodations for students with disabilities, including English learners with disabilities and English learners without disabilities. NCEO works to ensure that the assessment results for these groups of students are reported just as they are for other students and that they influence accountability systems in the same way as they do other students.

The Rhonda Weiss Center for Accessible IDEA Data improves state capacity to report Part B and Part C Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) data in accessible formats.

The Weiss Center, along with trusted partners, works closely with states to help them deal with challenges related to making IDEA data accessible.

The services delivered by the Weiss Center will benefit state education agencies in the following ways:

• Improve knowledge about accessibility needs, standards, best practices, and how to apply them.
• Build skills and competency needed to make state-level data more accessible in dynamic formats.
• Enhance ability to sharing knowledge about accessibility with other states, local education agencies (LEAs), and early intervention (EI) programs.
• Increase access to data by people who have historically been excluded. This will improve data quality due to broader data use and analysis.

The Center for the Integration of IDEA Data (CIID) provides technical assistance to state education agencies (SEAs) to increase the capacity to report high quality data required under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part B Sections 616 and 618. CIID supports the integration of IDEA data systems and processes with the statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS). CIID is working directly with SEAs to resolve the challenges associated with fragmented IDEA, SLDS and EDFacts data management practices and data systems architecture. When IDEA data are fully integrated into the SLDS, SEAs will be able to more efficiently complete federal data reporting and have higher quality IDEA data to inform decision-making for improved educational outcomes.