Expected Educational Outcomes for Students with Disabilities

The current national preoccupation with the results of education must shift to include students with disabilities. It is time to move beyond concern over equal access to education and to examine the extent to which students with disabilities achieve the goals set for other students. In this paper we provide some definitions of key terms in the discussion of educational outcomes. We discuss current national and international practices in the assessment of educational outcomes and describe some activities of states in outcomes assessment. We highlight the recently funded National Center on Educational Outcomes and then delineate several major considerations in the development of a comprehensive system of outcome indicators for students with disabilities.