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Welcome Letters

April 2006

Dear Colleague:

In the four years since the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law, states and districts have made significant progress in increasing the participation rates of students with disabilities in assessments and in improving achievement for these students. We applaud these successes. Last April, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced plans for expanding the assessment strategies for some students with disabilities under No Child Left Behind. Part of her pledge at that time was a commitment to provide technical assistance on teaching and assessing all students with disabilities to enable states to fully implement the provisions of No Child Left Behind.

Today we are following up on that pledge. This Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students With Disabilities represents a collaborative effort between the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) to assist states in raising the achievement of all students with disabilities. This Tool Kit builds on the technical assistance materials the secretary released on Dec. 14, 2005, which can be downloaded from http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/speced/toolkit/index.html.

Our initial audiences for this Tool Kit are those in state-level leadership positions. Our hope is that they in turn will share these materials with others who have responsibility for improving teaching and assessing for all students. In addition, to facilitate broad dissemination of these materials, today we are launching a Web site, accessible through http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osers/reports.html, that includes the materials in this binder. The Web site will be updated with additional materials as they become available.

This Tool Kit includes a set of papers titled Including Students With Disabilities in Large-Scale Assessments, with an executive summary and a glossary of terms, written by experts in large-scale assessments and the education of students with disabilities. These papers, commissioned by OSERS, include topics related to individualized education program team decision-making, professional development for educators, standards and assessment approaches, and validity and reliability of assessments. The Tool Kit also includes 14 technical assistance documents developed by OSERS’ grantees. These documents were chosen based on their relevance to improving teaching and assessing all students with disabilities.

We appreciate the work you do every day to improve the academic achievement of students with disabilities and hope you find these materials useful as you continue to strengthen accountability and assessments for all students.

Sincerely,

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