As previously announced in ADE Director’s Communication NO. IA-04-110 of May 13, 2004, beginning with the 2004-2005 school year, the Arkansas student assessment program extends to school-aged students receiving educational services in therapeutic day treatment programs within the state. This includes both students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers. The memorandum also stated that the local education agency (LEA) with a student in a therapeutic day treatment program had to arrange for the student to participate in the assessment at the LEA’s campus on the days of testing. An alternative to this arrangement has now been approved for local district use.
An alternative location to test such a day student is at the therapeutic day treatment program site, as long as the environment is conducive to conducting student assessment and the individual conducting the assessment is a trained and licensed teacher of the district. In this way, the school district and its personnel are directly responsible for taking all of the appropriate measures to ensure test security requirements are met.
The LEA may use either of these options on an individual student basis.