Evaluating Inclusive Educational Practices for Students With Severe Disabilities Using the Program Quality Measurement Tool

Recent legislative and school reform efforts require schools to evaluate and improve educational practices for students with severe disabilities. The authors developed the Program Quality Measurement Tool (PQMT) to enable administrators and educators to evaluate the educational programming provided to students with severe disabilities against best practice indicators, identify programmatic strengths and needs, and assess improvements in educational service delivery over time. The PQMT incorporates a multimethod approach to assessing inclusive practices for students with severe disabilities at the levels of the local education agency, school building, and student. The results indicate acceptable levels of interobserver agreement, test-retest reliability, internal consistency, congruent validity, and discriminative validity for the PQMT.