Assessment Accommodations and Testing Modifications

Assessment Accommodations

Assessment accommodations are changes to the presentation or format of a test that do not change the targeted content of the test. Some examples include a separate room for testing (to reduce distractions), additional time (for students with a learning disability), or a scribe (for students who have challenges with fine motor skills). The purpose of test accommodations is to improve the accessibility of the test without increasing or decreasing the difficulty of the test items. If the difficulty of an item changes, the test scores are no longer comparable across students, resulting in invalid interpretation of what the test results show about student achievement. The purpose of a test accommodation is thus to increase access to the greatest extent possible while still maintaining the consistency with which resultant scores are used.

Students who are deaf may be eligible for a range of accommodations, including but not limited to those listed above. For example, some students who are deaf are emerging readers. A glossary could be made available to assist with reading passages, a resource that includes words that are not the target of the test item but may not be a part of the student’s fluent vocabulary. This resource would not change the content of the test because the glossary is tailored to include only vocabulary that is unrelated to the tested content. A second example, one that is more controversial, is allowing students to have a sign language interpreter translate the test items instead of requiring the students to read the test items in written form (either on paper or on a computer screen). In any language translation, where the integrity of the source language and the target language are maintained, some aspects of the item may be changed because the grammatical structure and vocabulary of the two languages are different. Translation is thus different than a verbatim transliteration. In the case of sign language versions of written test [Page 62]items, transliteration results in a literal visual representation of the source language, one that does not integrate the full linguistic structure of the sign language. Depending on the content area, some institutions or educational systems will not allow a sign language interpreter (or translation into any different language) because of concerns that the translation may result in different content than tests in the “base” language.

The research base on the effects of sign language accommodations is relatively sparse; few studies have designs that allow for causal inferences. In fact, there is some indication that students may perform worse when they use signed accommodations, an outcome that suggests that translations from a “base” format may have a negative effect. Further work is needed on the changes to the target content that occur when items are translated as well as how students use these accommodations when interacting with written test items for providing their responses.

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