Elizabeth Barker, PhD
Accessibility Research Manager
Elizabeth Barker began her career in education as a middle school and elementary special education teacher, specifically of students with mild-to-moderate disabilities in Michigan and Colorado. She received her doctoral degree with an emphasis on growth trajectories for students with learning disabilities in mathematics and reading comprehension from the University of Oregon. Her current research focuses on how growth trajectories vary among students with visual impairments, deafness and hearing loss, and other disabilities.
Publications by Elizabeth Barker
Longitudinal models of reading and mathematics achievement in deaf and hard of hearing students
New research using longitudinal data provides evidence that deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students continue to build skills in math and reading throughout grades 2 to 8, challenging assumptions that DHH students’ skills plataeu in elementary grades.
Topics: Equity, Measurement & scaling
In this blog, Elizabeth Barker shares the motivation and key insights from her study with Angela Johnson exploring academic achievement and growth for students in special education during summers and school years.
This study evaluates the effects of asking items throughout the passage (i.e., embedding items) to achieve a more precise measure of reading comprehension by removing barriers for students to demonstrate their understanding. Results showed a significant impact of embedding comprehension items within reading passages on the measurement of student achievement in comparison to answering items at the end of the passage.
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, Reading & language arts
This study examines the text quality of math assessment items for students with VI who use screen readers. Using data from about 29.5 million students taking standard versions of the MAP Growth math assessment, and 48,845 students taking accessible versions, we identified high-quality items, those that measured achievement for both students with and without VI equally well, and low-quality items, which showed differences between the two groups of students.
Topics: Accessibility, Equity, Math & STEM
Supporting students with disabilities throughout the year
Students with disabilities lose even more ground than peers during summer and other interruptions in their learning—but they don’t need to. Data point to a need for services that extend beyond the school year.
In this webinar by the Alliance for Excellent Education, NWEA, and the National Center for Learning disabilities, learn about recent research on academic growth for students in special education before the pandemic and implications for policies and practices designed to spur COVID-19 recovery.
Topics: Equity, COVID-19 & schools, Seasonal learning patterns & summer loss
Understanding differential growth during school years and summers for students in special education
New research examining academic achievement and growth of students in special education and their peers who were never in special education during each school year and summer in grades K-4 shows that students with disabilities grow as much or more academically during the school year than their peers without disabilities during some years, but that steeper summer learning losses for students with disabilities contribute to widening disparities.
Topics: Equity, Growth modeling, Seasonal learning patterns & summer loss
