Education Week - January 14, 2015 - 6

With Common Core, More States Sharing Test Questions
By Catherine Gewertz
When Georgia found that its bank
of questions for annual student tests
was a bit thin here and there last
year, it turned to Kentucky and borrowed
a few.
That kind of item-sharing agreement
is becoming more commonplace
now that most states share
the same academic standards.
Georgia assessment leaders
reached out to Kentucky during the
2013-14 school year because they
knew that Kentucky had already
begun using its new k-prep test
based on the common core. That
meant the state had completed the
lengthy and expensive process of
designing, vetting, and field-testing
hundreds of assessment items.
Georgia was still developing its
Georgia Milestones Assessment,
which makes its debut this winter.
"When you are implementing
a new assessment system, your
[item] bank is not as robust as it
is four or five years down the road
when you've field-tested more items
and have more freedom to put a
[test] form together," said Melissa
Fincher, Georgia's deputy superintendent
for assessment and accountability.
Georgia
has used only a few of
Kentucky's items so far, but it has
benefited in particular from the
Bluegrass State's assortment of
open-ended questions, since Georgia's
test has always been multiplechoice
only, Ms. Fincher said. She is
talking with a couple of other states
about item-sharing agreements.
Item-sharing isn't brand new;
some states were doing it before
they adopted the common core.
Even with different academic standards,
there was enough commonality
of content that states could
share some test questions. But testing
officials say that sharing the
Common Core State Standards-
which 43 states and the District of
Columbia now do-makes it easier.
"That was always the hurdle on
sharing items," said Ken L. Draut,
Kentucky's associate commissioner
for assessment and accountability.
"If you don't have the same standards,
it is much harder to link with
another state."
Cost and Time Savings
Kentucky has one item-sharing
agreement with Georgia and another
with Illinois. A key benefit,
Mr. Draut said, is the time and
money saved on item development.
It typically takes nine to 18
months to have questions ready for
inclusion on a test.
Even once a state has a fully
stocked item bank, it must be continually
replenished to ensure secure
items are available, he said.
"You can't use the same ones over
and over. Say you get to the second
or third year of a geometry test,
and you're running short, and all
you need is a few more good items
for 7th grade," Mr. Draut said. "It's
good to have another place to turn
to instead of undertaking a whole
development process."
Kentucky won't be able to keep
using items from Illinois' newest,
however. Illinois is moving to
the Partnership for Assessment
PAGE 7 >
New Studies Planned
On Down Syndrome
By Sarah D. Sparks
For the first time in seven years, the National Institutes
of Health has updated its plan for research on
Down syndrome, including an expanded focus on how to
improve students' learning and memory and help them
participate more in K-12 and higher education.
It's a big leap from even a decade ago, and an acknowledgment,
say advocates and experts on the syndrome,
that research to improve children's medical quality of
life is in some places outstripping the pace of innovations
to improve their educational trajectory.
"Before some of the serious heart issues were solved,
the mortality was so high and so young. The longevity
has gone way up, and that brings up more issues for research,"
said Ricki Sabia, a senior policy adviser for the
National Down Syndrome Congress, based in Roswell,
Ga. "When my son [now 22] was born, there was no option
for college; it wasn't something even thought about.
Now, ... there's something to actually study."
The nih is the largest federal funder of research on the
syndrome, with an estimated budget of $19 million in
2014, making its priorities critical in setting a path for
understanding the condition. When the nih was implementing
its first plan for Down syndrome in 2007, there
was no evidence on-and there were few researchers even
studying-what causes problems in memory and learning
in people with Down syndrome, according to an analysis
by the LuMind Foundation, formerly known as the Down
Syndrome Research and Treatment Foundation, in Marlborough,
Mass.
Longer Life Spans
The need to understand and support students with
Down syndrome in school has risen dramatically, in part
because children with the condition are more likely than
ever to live long enough and be healthy enough to attend.
Down syndrome is caused by a full or partial extra
copy of chromosome 21, the smallest human chromosome,
which, according to the nih, is responsible for
200 to 300 of humans' more than 20,000 genes. These
mutations-affecting 1 in 691 babies born in the United
States-can cause intellectual disabilities, a characteristic
facial appearance, and weak muscle tone.
Up until the mid-1970s, the severe medical conditions
associated with Down syndrome-such as leukemia,
heart defects, and autoimmune weaknesses-meant
that most babies born with it did not live to school age.
As the nih noted, the health advances for those children
have been considerable: The average life span of
someone born with Down syndrome has risen from 25
in 1983 to more than 60 today.
For schools, that translates to more students with Down
syndrome continuing in high school, college, and careers,
and more questions about how to include them meaningfully
at a time of high-stakes testing and accountability.
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 14, 2015 | www.edweek.org
The new research plan includes a focus on the complex
genetic and environmental interactions that can affect
memory and learning in students with Down syndrome.
For example, children with Down syndrome are also
at higher risk of having other conditions known to cause
problems in learning, including autism disorders; immune
weakness that leads to repeated infections and
missed school; and obstructive sleep apnea, a condition
in which a person stops breathing for brief periods while
asleep, reducing oxygen to the brain.
"On one level, there are interrelationships
among all this," said Michael M. Harpold,
the chief scientific officer of the LuMind
Foundation. "The nih is trying to get a
deeper handle on cognition" through its
new research focus, he said.
For example, he noted that one study
underwritten by LuMind found students
with Down syndrome who had
sleep apnea had verbal IQs that were
an average of 9 points lower than Down
syndrome students with no apnea. The
research plan calls for studies of other simultaneous-or
"co-morbid"-issues and
how they may affect cognition.
"Historically, with intellectual disability, it's been
taken as something of a given that there's nothing to
be done. ... But as we learn more, ... the more data we
have to develop much better educational and behavioral
approaches to improve cognitive function."
Ms. Sabia of the National Down Syndrome Congress
said the focus on how Down syndrome can interact with
other issues could also help educators look beyond the
syndrome for reasons a student may struggle.
"I don't think people notice when the kid with Down
syndrome has [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder]
or something else," she said. "They say, 'Yeah, he's not
reading because he has Down syndrome,' but it's like,
'No, not necessarily, because other kids with Down syndrome
read, and maybe he has dyslexia.' "
Scrutinizing Practice
Emerging research is already finding that common
practice for students with intellectual disabilities may
not work as well for those with Down syndrome.
A standard early intervention for a baby or child with
difficulty learning to speak, for example, is an hour a
week of communication instruction, which prior studies
have shown to be helpful for infants with intellectual
disabilities, broadly speaking. But in a 2014 study in the
American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental
Disabilities, Paul J. Yoder, a professor of special education
at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., found
that children with Down syndrome needed not one hour
a week but five.
"Learning to talk is harder for students with Down
syndrome than other children, even when you take into
account IQ, developmental age, and chronological age,"
said Mr. Yoder. "It's tempting to think it's in the child,
but that's not true in this case. It's that our method of
implementing early intervention has not been sufficient."
In a follow-up study due out later this month, Mr.
MAPPING OUT THE RESEARCH
The National Institutes of Health has released
a new, seven-year research plan for studying
Down syndrome, which includes a greater
focus on students in educational settings.
Among the new areas of emphasis:
> Coexisting ("co-morbid") conditions
RECOMMENDATION: Explore medicines and
behavioral therapies for individuals with both
Down syndrome and other psychiatric and
medical conditions.
EXAMPLE: Study how conditions like obstructive
sleep apnea, autism, epilepsy, and psychiatric
problems-which students with Down syndrome
are at greater risk of having-affect students'
memory, learning, and educational trajectory.
> Communication
RECOMMENDATIONS: Identify effective
interventions and educational strategies to help
children with Down syndrome process language
and enhance their communication skills.
EXAMPLE: Explore and identify underlying
causes of differences in English-language
development among students from different
races or ethnicity.
> Behavior
RECOMMENDATIONS: Explore new intervention
research, including behavioral supports, for use
in family, school, and residential environments
to help individuals enhance learning, increase
physical fitness and maintain healthy weight,
and improve quality of life.
EXAMPLE: Devise measures of physical-strength
testing and training for students with Down
syndrome, who typically lose muscle fitness
throughout adolescence.
SOURCE: National Institutes of Health
> Adult transitions
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Identify medical, intellectual,
social, and family factors
that may improve students'
independence and community
involvement.
EXAMPLES: Establish the
number of students with Down
syndrome who participate in
higher education, careers, and
volunteering after high school,
and identify ways to increase
participation.
Yoder and colleagues explore why the time spent in the
intervention was so important: Students with the syndrome
are typically slower to coordinate communication
sounds, gestures, and shared eye gaze, and also slower
to learn to close their mouths fully to create specific
sounds. Students with Down syndrome in the study who
participated in the more frequent training were making
speech-like sounds after only three months.
Mr. Harpold of the LuMind Foundation said the nih
research plan is comprehensive, but cautioned that
such research projects as tracking the effects of different
combinations of disorders along with Down syndrome
will be vast, multiyear, and expensive.
"The biggest issue we still confront there is money;
the nih budget has been flat. How much can you do?"
Mr. Harpold said.
Raising the awareness among researchers and educators
that students with Down syndrome can and want
to continue their education will help them, Ms. Sabia
said. "Just saying 'postsecondary' in [the plan] is an acknowledgment
by the scientific community that there is
a different future for these young people," she said.
Scan this tag with
your smartphone
for a link to
"Down Syndrome
Directions: The
National Institutes
of Health Research
Plan on Down
Syndrome."
www.edweek.org/
links
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Education Week - January 14, 2015

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