An Analysis of Accommodations Issues from the Standards and Assessments Peer Review. Technical Report 51.
A report commissioned by the Accommodations Monitoring Study Group of the Assessing Special Education Students State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards. It is the second in a three-part series providing information to states about the monitoring of accommodations to address the question of how states meet the NCLB requirement to routinely monitor the extent to which test accommodations are consistent with those provided during instruction, specifically for students with IEPs. This technical report provides a comprehensive analysis of the peer review guidance information and the methodology used in the research, as well as summarizing themes found across multiple peer reviews of state assessment systems. The first report in the series is Hints and Tips for Addressing Accommodations Issues for Peer Review.
Test Accommodations and Standardized Assessment for Students with Learning Disabilities who are Second Language Learners
Federal mandates require that all students participate in large-scale assessments. A population of students with learning disabilities and who are second language learners are emerging within the schools. The purpose of this descriptive study was to gain additional knowledge about accommodation use by determining what accommodations were provided and whether the accommodations used were related to student achievement. Information was collected on accommodation use by 6 th and 7 th grade students who participated in a large-scale assessment. A post hoc data analysis was conducted to investigate accommodation use during the AIMS-DPA reading assessment. A questionnaire completed by teachers provided additional data on accommodations use by English language learners. In this descriptive study, the frequency data indicated the type and number of accommodations received and any relation to reading scores. The collected data indicated a high percentage of accommodations were provided to English language learners, who have learning disabilities in 6 th grade than 7 th grade. A higher number of non-linguistic accommodations were provided than language-related accommodations. Language-related accommodations were provided more frequently to 6 th grade students. Analyses indicated that reading performance and accommodations were not significantly related. Students who were identified with a learning disability and who were second language learners had the lowest reading scores among the student groups.
Item-Level Effects of the Read-Aloud Accommodation for Students With Reading Disabilities
Research support for providing a read-aloud accommodation (i.e., having an individual read test items and directions aloud) to students with disabilities has been somewhat limited, particularly when merely examining effects of the accommodation on overall test scores for general groups of students with disabilities. We examined data on accommodated and nonaccommodated performances of students with specific reading disabilities on math test items anticipated to be highly sensitive to accommodation effects due to their level of reading and math difficulty. We conducted analyses across 3 consecutive years of data from an elementary and middle school statewide assessment program. Within the elementary data set we identified a significant Accommodation Group × Reading Difficulty interaction effect, such that the accommodation appeared to more positively impact student performance on items that were classified as difficult to read. We describe other identified effects and discuss limitations of the study, as well as implications.