Education officials approve change to proficiency assessments for students with special needs

The Board of Public Education unanimously approved a proposal from state Superintendent Susie Hedalen on May 16 to change how Montana public schools assess the academic proficiency of students with special needs, the latest in a series of alterations to the state’s standardized testing practices.

Friday’s vote gave Hedalen and the Montana Office of Public Instruction permission to consolidate English, math and science proficiency assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities into a single delivery platform. As Office of Public Instruction Director of Assessment Cedar Rose told the board last week, assessments for students with special needs are currently administered via contracts with two separate vendors, one focused on English and math proficiency at particular grade levels and another focused on science comprehension. 

With both alternative assessment contracts slated to expire this year, Rose told board members that OPI is in a good position to streamline the process. Those assessments will now be delivered through the same computer testing platform as Montana’s new through-year assessments for all students, which the state has gradually introduced in public schools statewide to shift away from the more established practice of gauging student proficiency through a single end-of-year test. 

Rose acknowledged the testing population involved is small — about 1% of students statewide, or roughly 900 in English and math and 400 in science — but that the resulting duplication in funding and district-level assessment training has proven less than ideal for local educators.

“It’s a very small percent of our population, but still we want to make sure that our assessment is serving that population of students,” Rose said, “and from our observations and what we’ve heard from the field, our current model is not necessarily doing that.”

According to information submitted to the board by OPI, the new assessments for students with special needs can be conducted during separate windows in the fall and spring, and local educators should have greater flexibility to accommodate an individual student’s needs and match their cognitive abilities to subject-specific content standards. Rose said the consolidation of all English, math and science assessments into a single platform already in widespread use should reduce both the cost and amount of local staff training associated with student testing.

The proposed change generated only one question from the board, as longtime teacher Renee Rasmussen asked what, if anything, would be missed from the current approach. 

“It’s hard for me to point out anything that will be missed from our current assessment model,” Rose replied.

During last week’s two-day meeting, Hedalen also gave the board an update on OPI’s approach to a wave of public education policy passed by the 2025 Legislature. The agency’s past practice under former Superintendent Elsie Arntzen was to craft a post-session list of new laws impacting K-12 schools. This time around, Hedalen said, OPI is compiling a implementation packet detailing the compliance requirements and budgetary impacts of new legislation including bills related to the state Land Board, which guides how the state manages trust lands that generate revenue to benefit public schools. 

One of the agency’s first major tasks has been the rollout of Montana’s STARS Act, which directed OPI to quickly begin collecting information from local districts about their plans to raise starting teacher pay to meet the law’s benchmarks for additional state funding. According to OPI, as of the Friday deadline, 392 of the state’s 417 school districts had submitted applications stating their commitment to meeting those benchmarks.