The Effects of Test Accommodation on Test Performance: A Review of the Literature
Title
The Effects of Test Accommodation on Test Performance: A Review of the Literature
Author
Stephen G. Sireci, Shuhong Li, and Stanley Scarpati
Source
Center for Educational Assessment Research Report no. 485. Amherst, MA: School of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Year Published
2006
Background
In recent years, interest in the fairness of test accommodations has risen alongside the increase in standardized testing. Many people accept the administration of certain accommodations on standardized tests for students with disabilities while they question others. For example, if a student with a visual impairment is provided a standardized test in large-print or Braille most people will accept this accommodation because they do not feel such accommodations give students an advantage over other test takers. However, accommodations such as reading a test out loud to students or providing extra time on tests for students with learning disabilities are often questioned because of the belief that these accommodations would help anybody who was granted them and would give an unfair advantage to those students receiving them. The opposing argument is called the "interaction hypothesis." The interaction hypothesis states that accommodations help students who need them but do not affect the scores of students who don’t. This review looks for evidence to support the interaction hypothesis.
Research Questions
- Do test accommodations affect the test performance of students with disabilities?
- What specific types of test accommodations result in valid score interpretations for specific types of students?
-
Do test accommodations affect the test performance of students who are English Language Learners (ELL)?
Findings
-
All students benefit to some degree from accommodations such as extended time
on tests or having the test read out loud to them. However, the gains for students
with disabilities and English language learners (ELLs) were greater than the
gains of their general education counterparts.
-
There is a great amount of diversity among both students with disabilities and
ELLs. This diversity among students coupled with variety of ways a single type
of accommodation can be implemented make it difficult to make broad statements
about the effects of a specific accommodation on a specific type of student.
Conclusion/Recommendations
According to this review, all students benefit from certain accommodations
such as extra time and oral presentation of exams. Students with disabilities,
however, receive a greater benefit and demonstrate their true abilities more
clearly when they are allowed to use accommodations. In fact, the authors suggest
the fact that general education students benefit from accommodations may say
more about overly stringent test conditions that plague standardized tests
in general than it does about accommodations for students with disabilities
being unfair.
One idea which the authors believe holds promise for providing an equitable testing experience for all students is the concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL does not focus on accommodations for a subset of students, but instead strives to create tests that accommodate a wide spectrum of users in their basic design. UDL tests may allow for more flexible testing conditions without changing test results. For example, a UDL assessment may allow every student (not just those with testing accommodations listed in their IEPs) to take as much time as they need on tests because the tests would be assessing the students’ abilities in solving particular types of problems not their speed.
Though UDL as a concept holds promise for creating tests which would be equitable and accommodate a broad range of student abilities it has not been well researched. Hopefully, as UDL assessments are designed and implemented research will examine this new trend and discover if it lives up to the promise of providing assessments which are so universal that the need for accommodations is reduced or eliminated.