Adaptation and Modification of Early Grade Reading Assessments for Learners with Disabilities: Lessons from the Multi-Country Study on Inclusive Education (MCSIE) in Cambodia, Nepal, and Malawi

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Assessment is a critical part of all education systems. But assessment goes beyond simply testing a student’s knowledge, assessment helps educators understand students’ needs, set standards, and evaluate progress. Although more teachers are being trained on how to educate all students within the classroom, comparatively less training has been provided and less guidance is being utilized on how to assess the learning of students with disabilities. Historically, learners with disabilities have been disadvantaged or excluded from various learning assessment practices. This lack of inclusion impedes their learning, as teachers and educational systems are not able to adequately measure these students’ learning outcomes or progress. Therefore, even in schools with accessible learning environments, assessments are traditionally not accessible and, thus, do not adequately capture the learning of students with disabilities. If assessments do not accurately capture the learning of all students, including those traditionally marginalized within the education system, then diverse populations within a country, region, or classroom are at risk of being left behind.
Learning assessments are often not accessible because of how these assessments are developed. As a result, assessments are often created in a way that does not consider the unique cognitive, physical, and sociocultural needs of learners with disabilities and other marginalized groups. Traditionally, the goal is to assess all learners using the same or very similar test materials to have norm-referenced comparability data for a target population (American Educational Research Association, 2014). However, in the early 2000s, many countries were implementing national standardized assessments that were not capturing what students in the country knew, as students were scoring so poorly that the test could not identify their current knowledge and skills (RTI International, 2015). As a result, USAID tasked RTI International in 2006 with developing an EGRA, with the goal to develop an instrument that could accurately measure how well primary grade students in LMICs were acquiring reading skills (RTI International, 2015). The EGRA is primarily used by early grade reading projects and, as of 2015, has been used by over 30 organizations in more than 70 countries.
Recently, many organizations have tried to adapt or modify the EGRA to be inclusive of learners with disabilities with varying levels of success. Given this interested in ensuring that EGRAs are inclusive of learners with disabilities, this presentation will review the process and lessons learned from adapting the EGRA in three countries (Cambodia, Nepal, and Malawi) under the umbrella of the Multi-Country Study on Inclusive Education (MCSIE) for students who are deaf or hard of hearing and students who are blind of have low vision.
Lessons learned will be discussed from both the side of EGRA development and the evaluation of these processes with implications and next steps.

Sub Unit

• Inclusive Education SIG

Chair

• Valerie Karr, Inclusive Development Partners

Individual Presentations

• Lessons Learned from Cambodia: Adapting the EGRA for students using Braille and Sign Language - Jennifer Ryan, RTI International

• Lessons Learned from Nepal: Adapting the EGRA for students using Braille and Sign Language - EMILY KOCHETKOVA, Inclusive Development Partners

• Lessons Learned from Malawi: Adapting the EGRA for Learners who are Blind or with Low Vision and who have Learning Disabilities - Fernando Rubio, Juarez & Associates

Discussant

• Christopher Johnstone, University of Minnesota