As background, the speakers first discussed their research findings regarding states’ inclusion and accommodation policies. Martha Thurlow discussed states’ policies for including and accommodating students with disabilities; Lynne Sacks and Laura Golden provided similar information about states’ policies for English-language learners.
According to Thurlow, all states now have a policy that articulates guidelines for including and accommodating students with disabilities. These policies typically acknowledge the idea that some changes in administration practices are acceptable because they do not alter the construct tested, while others are unacceptable because they change the construct being assessed. Thurlow noted that the majority of states make a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable accommodations, but they use a variety of terminology to do so (e.g., accommodation vs. modification, allowed vs. not allowed, standard vs. nonstandard, permitted vs. nonpermitted, and reportable vs. not reportable). For students with disabilities, accommodations are determined by the IEP teams, and they can be categorized as changes in the administration setting or timing (e.g., one-on-one administration, extended time), changes in test presentation (e.g., large print, Braille, read aloud), or changes in the mode for responding to the test (e.g., dictating responses, typing instead of handwriting responses, marking answers in the test booklet).
In their presentations, Lynne Sacks and Laura Golden reported that all but one of the states have policies that articulate guidelines for including English-language learners in assessments. Forty-three states have policies for providing accommodations to English-language learners. All of these states allow English-language learners to test with accommodations, and 15 states expressly prohibit certain accommodations. This information is summarized in Figure 4-1.