Developing Accountability Metrics for Students with Disabilities in Higher Education: Determining Critical Questions.

In order to address the significant gap in the availability of information on postsecondary students with disabilities in Illinois, the Illinois Board of Higher Education funded a three-year project to develop a disability metrics model to improve accountability efforts and strategic policy development. The Metrics on Disability and Postsecondary Education (MDPE) team designed the model to determine the extent to which the needs of students with disabilities were being met throughout their educational careers. The project consists of three phases. Phase I sought to identify the critical questions/issues related to disability access that the model needed to address. Phase II focused on instrument development, data collection methods, and implementation of a pilot study. Phase III was dedicated to dissemination across institutions of higher education in Illinois and finalizing the model. This paper reports the activities and findings of Phase I. The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) report Gateway to Success: Rethinking Access and Success for a New Century (2002) revealed significant gaps in existing information on students with disabilities in postsecondary education. While national surveys indicated that over 9% of postsecondary students report disabilities (Henderson, 2001), the IBHE report showed a range from less than 1% to 4%. Furthermore, existing data resources and practices were found frequently to be incomplete and difficult to analyze on a system-wide basis, because institutions varied widely in their methods of counting students with disabilities and assessing service provision and quality. Institutions lacked reliable comparative data on the experiences in and benefits of postsecondary education for students with and without disabilities. IBHE determined that to effectively respond to public need, a comprehensive and continuous approach to this issue was needed. The discrepancies in expected versus reported representation of people with disabilities revealed in comparisons between national surveys and the IBHE report, sent up red flags. Several explanations for the discrepancies might apply; however, identifying a cause was not possible given existing data resources. This dearth of information is not limited to Illinois. As Lex Frieden (2004) of the National Council on Disability points out, “the amount of rigorous, evidence-based research on programs that promote positive outcomes for students with disabilities is severely limited” (p. 6). Furthermore, most existing research has focused on the elementary and secondary levels and on the initial transition period/process from high school to work or postsecondary education.