Cooperative Groups: Alternative Assessment for Students with Disabilities?

Abstract

This article describes the results for students with mild disabilities who participated in a state science assessment with cooperative groups. The students with disabilities participated at the grade level of their enrolled or functional educational level. Results for students with disabilities from both the objective and group parts of the assessment were consistent with expectations in relation to results for general education students. However, further studies are needed of the abilities measured by the assessment scores for students with disabilities, especially the relation of individual and group scores from the project. In addition, examination of residuals from regression analyses did not indicate any negative effects on group performance from the participation of students with disabilities in the cooperative groups. The residuals analyses also showed that further investigation is needed into the nature of the participation in cooperative groups for some students with disabilities.

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