Opportunity to learn the intended curriculum: measuring key instructional indicators and examining relations to achievement for students with disabilities

Abstract

For purposes of this study, I developed an OTL measurement tool called the Instructional Learning Opportunities Guidance System (MyiLOGS) to quantify the extent to which students with disabilities have the opportunity to learn the intended curriculum as measured by instructional indicators of the enacted curriculum. The methodology underlying MyiLOGS was an extension of the teacher logging approach via an online technology that provided teachers a self-report structure for logging key OTL indices concurrent with their daily instruction. Thirty-eight teachers across three states provided OTL data for 46 Mathematics and English/Language Arts classes and 89 students with disabilities nested within these eight-grade classes. Major findings of this study indicated that (a) students’ opportunity to learn the intended curriculum is highly variable even within the same state and subject; (b) opportunity to learn the intended curriculum for students with disabilities presents itself as differentiated opportunity structure that differs from the overall class; and (c) initial evidence for the predictive validity of several class-based OTL indices as measured by MyiLOGS has been substantiated. Specifically, the data indicated that teachers spent about two-thirds of their allocated class time on teaching academic standards, about a fourth on custom skills/activities, and about one twentieth on non-instructional activities. In addition, teachers covered approximately two-thirds of the academic standards based on an average of about 151 school days. With respect to a differentiated opportunity structure in general education classrooms, students with disabilities experienced less instructional time on standards, more non-instructional time, and less content coverage than their classmates. Lastly, several class- and student-based OTL indices were related to student achievement. A major implication lies in the development of MyiLOGS, which was used successfully to collect data on a range of OTL indices related to time, content, and quality. Evidence to support its feasibility, usability, and promise of MyiLOGS was provided. As such, large-scale research on OTL including normative studies as well as subgroup-specific investigations can now be launched.