Understanding the methods and strategies deployed within the Inclusive Access to a Diploma: Reimagining Proficiency for Students with Disabilities is essential for embedding assessment choices (including performance tasks) within core instruction. This page provides California’s educational community with a foundational understanding and should be used in conjunction with key terms and frequently asked questions.
Initiative Goals and Background
Multiple Routes up the Mountain
The Inclusive Access to a Diploma: Reimagining Proficiency for Students with Disabilities initiative aims to provide high school students with disabilities, including students eligible for the California Alternate Assessment (CAA), with access to agency and choice. As high school students progress toward graduation, it is essential that they have flexible and inclusive opportunities toClick here to enter text. demonstrate contentClick here to enter text. area proficiency, in alignment with California state standards, associated curriculum frameworks, and district-adopted curriculum in all content areas.
Inclusive Access to a Diploma Initiative Conceptual Framework
The CDE aims to provide California constituents with tools and resources that students can use to show proficiency in graduation-based coursework as outlined in the state minimum graduation requirements. Specifically, we would like to hear from representatives from each of the following community members regarding the degree to which the guidance and materials from this initiative support the following goals:
- Students with disabilities and their families—We want students with disabilities and their families to 1) understand students’ rights related to identifying and accessing alternative means of expression within core coursework instruction needed for graduation and 2) to be able to explore the big ideas of coursework requirements for earning a standard diploma based on the state minimum requirements.
- District and school administrators—Our goal is to give these community members the tools and resources related to creating the inclusive infrastructure and curricular supports needed for sustaining alternative means of expression as a global practice within summative and formative classroom assessments.
- General education teachers—Our goal is to empower these teachers regardless of content area with the knowledge, skills, and professional network to integrate alternative means of expression more holistically within classroom assessments, especially those tied to graduation.
- Special education teachers—Our goal is to equip these teachers with the knowledge and skills for working with other IEP team members, including but not limited to general education teachers, to support the identification and application of viable alternative means of expression for specific students with disabilities on their caseload could use when showing understanding of graduation-based coursework.
- High school counselors—Our goal is to equip high school counselors with strategic tools that would allow them to recommend, curate, and coach students and staff members in best practices for supporting alternative means of expression through resources and supports needed to identify courses and viable alternative means of expression options for students with disabilities working to earn a standard diploma.
- Other IEP team supports—Our goal for IEP teams is to see how to understand the communication strengths and understand the scope of students’ communication needs for the students with disabilities served through IEPs.
High school graduation coursework requirements represent multiple mountain peaks related to the rigor, depth of knowledge, and content expertise defined by state standards and curriculum. The routes represent the various ways students can express proficiency in a content area to demonstrate their understanding of big ideas tied to content standards. A route must satisfy the coursework requirements represented within the standards and curriculum frameworks to be deemed viable by educators.
The Inclusive Access to a Diploma: Reimagining Proficiency for Students with Disabilities initiative gives students, families, educators, site leaders, and district leaders clarity in how students are expected to demonstrate proficiency in order to receive a standard high school diploma. The initiative also offers tools and resources for providing alternative means of expression that are rigorous while being culturally and linguistically responsive to students’ communication preferences, strengths, and needs.
Centering the “Big Idea”
Various contributors including CDE representatives, State Board of Education members, subject matter experts, focus group participants, and others have collaborated to support the development of coursework, performance tasks, and guidance documents designed to equip state educators with what they need to provide students with disabilities with alternative means of expression when meeting state minimum graduation coursework requirements. As an important note, special emphasis was given to subject matter experts with considerable experience with California’s adopted curriculum frameworks, being leads on unpacked state standards to identify the essential “Big Ideas” of coursework requirements.
A course’s Big Ideas are the central concepts, understandings, or areas of focus that represent what a student will understand and do when taking that course. These concepts, defined using the curriculum frameworks and standards, distill down in the simplest terms the organizational structure for proficiency. Course Big Ideas cross multiple standard categories, with each category having a cluster of related standards. By unpacking a Big Idea (e.g., identifying the individual and groups of standards that make up a Big Idea) educators identify what is essential for proficiency, and therefore most emphasized within a course.
Centering on each course’s Big Ideas prevents individual standards from being taught in isolation from the course’s key concepts and allows for greater accessibility and more manageable supports. IEP teams, special education teachers, and content teachers collectively use the Big Ideas to prioritize what knowledge proficiency is essential within a course, especially in consideration of offering alternative means of expression for students with disabilities.
Centering Project Strategy on a Backward Design Approach
The instructional design process provided by this initiative is based on a backward design approach for lesson and assessment creation.
- Establishing desired results: Educators examine state-approved content standards and curriculum frameworks to pinpoint the essential goals of a course based on Big Ideas and their related lead standards.
- Determine acceptable evidence: Educators establish levels of acceptable evidence demonstrating students’ proficiency in course outcomes, provided it aligns with the set criteria.
- Identify alternative means of expression: Educators and students with disabilities explore suitable expression mediums that convey understanding with consideration of cultural backgrounds, abilities, interests, and needs. An option works if the student with disabilities can meet the established success criteria (demonstrating proficiency) and learning objectives. Educators should use local tools, IEP-defined supplementary aids and services, and other resources to design educational experiences that help students comprehend the learning material and articulate their knowledge effectively.
- Plan inclusive instruction: Once the course learning goals have been established and viable means of expression have been identified, it is up to local educators (e.g., site and district administrators, teachers, instructional coaches) and community members (e.g., students, families, school board members, and other community representatives) to identify the best curriculum, instructional pedagogies, and culturally responsive strategies to utilize within instruction to prepare students with disabilities to display their learning using alternative means of expression.
The chart below explores helpful questions educators can ask related to the standards and the needs of their students with disabilities, and to learn more about the backward design process.
- What should students know, understand, and be able to do?
- What is worthy of understanding?
- What enduring understandings are desired?
- What are students’ unique interests, post-secondary goals?
- What are the aligned IEP goals that might connect with this big idea and related set of standards?
- Are we ensuring all students with disabilities have the opportunity to show proficiency in diploma-based graduation requirements?
- How will we know if students have achieved the desired results and met the standards?
- What will we accept as evidence of students’ understanding and proficiency?
- What IEP- or other specialized service-defined supports might need to be considered for individual students?
- What IEP-defined accommodations and/or assessment details need to be considered when identifying viable and non-viable expression mediums for this student?
- How will we ensure options satisfy acceptable evidence?
- How will we ensure options align with students’ interests, cultures, values, abilities, needs, and passions?
- What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (procedures) will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results?
- Where does this content show up in students’ cultures, interests, and passions?
- What representations of content support deep understanding?
- Where will we incorporate students’ IEP-protected supplementary aids and services tied to instruction within this unit or lesson set?
- Which big ideas represent the central focus?
- What standards align with these big ideas?
- What are the curricular learning goals?
- What content standards do learning goals arise from?
- What is critical for future grade levels, courses, or for graduation?
- What specifically do the big ideas and their related standards require?
- Are we aligned on these requirements across our department or grade level? What process do we deploy to get aligned?
- In what ways can we represent the acceptable evidence so students, families, other educators, and IEP teams can best understand these expectations?
- How might students show this knowledge and understanding and these skills?
- What means of demonstrating proficiency lend themselves to the success criteria of the standards?
- How might we catalog potential options to show proficiency students have used in the past?
- What activities will equip students with this knowledge and these skills?
- What prerequisite skills and/or standards need to be reviewed for students to access this content?
- What curriculum, resources, and instructional frameworks best support these goals?
Learn more details about the initiative’s strategy around Embedding Alternative Means of Expression into Graduation-based Coursework.
