Section 612(b)(16) of the 2004 reauthorized IDEA states:
(A) IN GENERAL – All children with disabilities are included in all general State and district wide assessment programs,…with appropriate accommodations and alternate assessments where necessary and as indicated in their respective individualized education programs.
(B) ACCOMMODATION GUIDELINES – The State (or, in the case of a district wide assessment, the local educational agency) has developed guidelines for the provision of appropriate accommodations.
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENT
ACCOMMODATIONS
- Provide equitable access during instruction and assessments for students with disabilities.
- Intended to reduce or even eliminate the effects of a student’s disability.
- Do not reduce learning expectations.
- Must be the same for classroom instruction, classroom assessments, and district and state assessments.
ACCOMMODATIONS CATEGORIES
- Presentation Accommodations – Allow students to access information in ways that do not require them to visually read standard print. These alternate modes of access are auditory, multi-sensory, tactile, and visual.
- Response Accommodations – Allow students to complete activities, assignments, and assessments in different ways or to solve or organize problems using some type of assistive device or organizer.
- Setting Accommodations – Change the location in which a test or assignment is given or the conditions of the assessment setting.
- Timing and Scheduling Accommodations – Increase the allowable length of time to complete an assessment or assignment and perhaps change the way the time is organized.
Why Accommodations NOT Modifications OR Alterations
Accommodations provide access. They do not reduce learning expectations.
Modifications Anything done during classroom instruction and/or classroom assessment that change, lower, or reduce learning expectations and/or have the consequence of reducing student’s opportunity to learn critical content. Modifications may adversely affect students throughout their educational career.
Examples of modification include:
- require a student to learn less (e.g., fewer objectives, shorter units or lessons, fewer pages or problems),
- reduce assignments and assessments to easier problems or items,
- revise assignments or assessments to make them easier (e.g., crossing out half of the response choices on a multiple-choice test)
- give hints or clues to correct responses on assignments and tests.
- give out-of-grade level materials or assessments.
Accommodations for Instruction and Assessment
Documentation of accommodation on the IEP
Good IEP practices: with information obtained from the required summary of the student’s present level of educational performance (PLEP), includes the process of identifying and documenting accommodations in three areas.
- “Consideration of Special Factors” [Sec. 614 (d) (3) (B)]. This is where communication and assistive technology supports are considered.
- “Supplementary Aids and Services” [Sec. 602 (33) and Sec.614 (d) (1) (A) (i)]. This area of the IEP includes “aids, services, and other supports that are provided in regular education classes or other education-related settings to enable children with disabilities to be educated with non-disabled children to the maximum extent appropriate.
- “Participation in Assessments” [Sec. 612 (a) (16)]. This section of the IEP documents accommodations needed to facilitate the participation of students with disabilities in general state and district-wide assessments.
Involving students in selecting, using, and evaluating accommodations
The more students are involved in the selection process, the more likely the accommodations will be used, especially as students reach adolescence and the desire to be more independent increases. Self-advocacy skills are critical. Students need opportunities to learn which accommodations are most helpful for them, and need to learn how to make certain those accommodations are provided in all of their classes and wherever they need them outside of school.
Determining the consequences of assessment accommodations use.
Assessment accommodations that result in adverse consequences are commonly referred to as modifications, adaptations, alterations, and nonstandard or non-approved accommodations.
Questions to guide accommodation selection
Selecting accommodations for instruction and assessment is the role of a student’s IEP team. Use these questions to guild the selection of accommodation for students receiving special education services:
- What are the students’s learning strengths and areas of further improvement?
- How does the student’s learning needs affect the achievement of grade-level content standards?
- What specialized instruction (e.g., learning strategies, organizational skills, reading skills) does the student need to achieve grade-level content standards?
- What accommodations will increase the student’s access to instruction and assessment by addressing the students learning needs and reduce the effect of the student’s disability? These may be new accommodations or accommodations the student is currently using.
- What accommodations are regularly used by the student during instruction and assessments?
- What are the results for assignments and assessments when accommodations were used and not used?
- What is the student’s perception of how well an accommodation worked?
- Are there effective combinations of accommodations?
- What are the perceptions of parents, teachers, and specialists about how the accommodation worked?
- Should the student continue the use an accommodation, are changes needed, or should the use of the accommodation be discontinued?
Of the accommodations that match the student’s needs, consider
- the student’s willingness to learn and use the accommodation, and
- opportunities to learn how to use the accommodation in classroom settings.
Plan how and when the student will learn to use each new accommodation. Be certain there is ample time to learn to use instructional and assessment accommodations before an assessment takes place. Finally, plan for the ongoing evaluation and improvement of the student’s use of accommodations.
Use accommodations during instruction and assessment
Accommodation for instruction
Provide the selected accommodations during instructional periods that necessitate their use. An accommodation may not be used solely during assessments.
Accommodation for assessment
Planning for Test Day
Members of the IEP team, most often special education teacher, are given the responsibility fro arranging, coordinating, and providing assessment accommodations for all students who may need them. It is important to engage the appropriate personnel to plan the logistics and provisions of assessment accommodations on test day.
ETHICAL TESTING PRACTICES
Ethical testing practices must be maintained during the administration of assessments. Unethical practices include coaching students during testing, editing students responses, or giving clues in any way.
Evaluate and modify accommodation use
Collecting and analyzing data on the use and effectiveness of accommodations are necessary to ensure the meaningful participation of students with disabilities in state and district-wide assessments/ Data on the use and impact of accommodations during assessments may reveal questionable patterns of accommodations use, as well as support the continued use of some accommodations or the rethinking of others. Examination of the data may also indicate areas for which the IEP team, 504 plan committee, and test administrators need additional training and support.
Questions to guide evaluation of accommodation use at the school level
- Are students receiving accommodations as documented in their IEP plans?
- Are there procedures in place to ensure that teat administrators adhere to directions of the implementation of accommodations?
- How many students with IEPs are receiving accommodations?
- What types of accommodations are provided and are they appropriate to the student’s identified disability?
- How well do students who receive accommodations perform on state and local assessments? If students are not meeting the expected level of performance, is it due to the students not having had access to the necessary instruction, not receiving the accommodation, or using the accommodations that were not effective?
Questions to guide evaluation at the student level
- What accommodations are used by the student during instruction and assessments?
- What are the results of classroom assignments and assessments when accommodations are used versus when accommodations are not used? if a student did not meet the expected level of performance, is it due to not having access to the necessary instruction, not receiving the accommodations, or using accommodations was ineffective?
- What is the student’s perception of how well the accommodation worked?
- What combinations of accommodations seem to be effective?
- What are the difficulties encountered in the use of accommodations?
- What are the perceptions of teachers and others about how the accommodation appears to be working?
These questions can be used to formatively evaluate the accommodations used at the student level, as well as the school or district levels. School and district-level questions can be addressed by a committee responsible for continuous improvement efforts, while the student-level questions need to be considered by the IEP team.