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Steamboat Springs — For a small number of Steamboat Springs students, standardized tests involve a lot more than filling in circles with a No. 2 pencil.

This month, local special education and resource teachers are giving four Steam--boat students CSAP-A tests in a one-on-one setting, one question at a time. Depending on the needs of each student, the teachers read test questions out loud, provide students with extra time to finish the tests and write down the student's answers.

It can take a student and teacher as many as three weeks to complete a CSAP-A.

"This test isn't paper and pencil," said Genie Love, a special education teacher at Steamboat Springs High School. "It's totally interactive and one on one with me."

The state-mandated Colorado Student Assessment Program Alternate, or CSAP-A, is designed to gauge academic skills. But the test raises questions about the value of giving a standardized test to students who have a wide variety of learning disabilities and educational needs.

"In the sense that it helps us track continual progress of that student, yes, it is (valuable)," Kandise Gilbertson, learning support specialist at Steamboat Springs Middle School, said last week. "But some of these kids are such that a standardized test like this doesn't really show what they know."

Nearly 472,000 students across the state are taking the CSAP in March and April. About 5,000 Colorado students are taking the CSAP-A, said Jason Glass, principal consultant for student achievement with the Colorado Department of Education.

Students who take the CSAP-A in Colorado have varying degrees of learning disabilities that could include autism, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome or physical difficulties such as limited motor skills and impaired vision. Some students may have multiple disabilities.

Clearing hurdles

About 1 percent of Colorado students in grades three through 10 have been taking the CSAP-A annually since 2001.

Glass said he has directed CSAP-A testing since August and that he's aware of several debates that arose when the test was created.

"The key issue was that a lot of people around the country felt that this is a population of students who are impossible to test," he said. "There are still a lot of people who feel that teaching (special education students) math and science is outside their reach. Overcoming those two philosophical obstacles and changing hearts and minds about what these kids can do was the first big hurdle."

The impetus to clear that hurdle was a state law requiring standardized testing for all students, he said. The federal No Child Left Behind Act directs state education requirements.

"We're required federally to have an alternate test in place for every area we have a regular test," Glass said. "To develop academic CSAP-A tests that align with state standards, we had to break down and decompose the state standards into fundamental components."

Those components formed a test that Glass said can open new academic doors for special education students.

"(The CSAP-A) forces schools and school districts to teach these kids academic skills," he said. "In many cases, for the first time, kids with significant cognitive disabilities are getting taught reading, math, writing and science. It's been a very positive change for many of these kids."

New ways of teaching

Every teacher who administers the CSAP-A test first must receive training from the state.

Steamboat Springs Middle School resource teacher Brad Weber said he is the school's only teacher with that training.

Weber began administering the test with a student a week ago. For privacy reasons, the names, genders and grades of local students will not be reported.

Echoing comments from Glass, Weber said the testing process has made him reconsider how he teaches.

"The test has helped me assess a student's learning in a more broken-down fashion," he said. "It's a new way of drawing information out of students."

At the high school, Love described the process of working through a CSAP-A test with a student.

Students score on a scale of one to five for most questions, she said, earning a five for a correct answer given without additional help, and a one for a correct answer given after several prompts.

"You always want to end with the student getting the correct answer," Love said.

A sample question from Love's training last year in Denver, she said, reads as follows:

"Tell me which one of these tools you would use to measure the length and width of this rectangle in inches."

The student would be given several cards, each with a picture of a different object. One of the cards would show a ruler, the correct answer.

The prompts that teachers read to help the students -- a process Love called "scaffolding" -- are written by the state.

"They tell you exactly what to say," Love said, explaining that the "Level 2" prompt for that sample question gives the student a "50-50" choice and reads: "This is a ruler and this is a pencil. You measure length and width with a ruler, which tool would you use to measure length and width?"

Questions on a high school CSAP-A reading test are more involved, Love said. Last week, she used the scaffolding process with a student to answer questions about the characters and themes of a Shakespearean play.

When giving the CSAP-A, teachers are allowed to use any "accommodation" -- such as extra time, reading a question out loud or writing down answers -- that has been used with that student in the classroom for the past three months.

"It's not hard at all to be objective," Love said about giving the test to a student she works with every day. "The student either gets it right or gets it wrong."

Proud to take part

The CSAP process can have a significant effect on a school's environment as teachers prepare students to take high-stakes tests that determine the school's annual accountability rating released by the state each December. At the middle school, every student is involved in the testing.

Love said taking the CSAP-A can help special education students to not feel left out.

"I've seen kids be really proud of doing well on this test, because everyone else is taking the CSAP -- being able to take a test that everyone else is expected to take, and that you're doing well on? I've seen kids be really excited about that and feel good about themselves," Love said.

Glass said that although CSAP-A tests are not factored into a school's accountability report, they do factor into a school's Adequate Yearly Progress, a list of about 120 federally mandated, targeted areas for annual improvement.

"In Colorado, we have two systems for accountability -- the state system and the federal system," Glass said.

Dana Colgan, a special education teacher at Strawberry Park Elementary School, said the CSAP-A tests are not a one-size-fits-all solution to accountability.

"My main problem is that (the CSAP-A) is so broad," she said. "It's trying to reach so many disabilities and severities that it needs to be tightened a bit.

"For some kids, the time would be better spent on instruction."

CSAP-A testing ends Friday.