Assessing Special Needs Students
Assessment Modifications
What is assessment?
Assessment includes formal and informal methods of evaluating student progress and behaviors. An accommodation during an assessment is an adjustment to an activity, without compromising the integrity of the assessment.It is a change in the way a student accesses the assessment. A modification is a change in the assessment itself.
Presentation of Materials
During an assessment students can receive a variety of accommodations. Some of the most used in presenting assessments include, color copies of an assessment, using an easel format and providing large print testing booklets and answer sheets. Providing modifications to assessments include maintaining the guidelines set forth in a student's Individualized Education Plan. This may include but not limited to testing on a students current grade level. In most causes however, you cannot provide modifications to a state administered assessment.
Response to Assessment
Student response to assessments may include, dictation to an administer and computerized input. Other options are translator and marking in the testing booklet.
Assessment Setting
There are two primary methods used for testing students in North Carolina. They are small group and one on one. Small group testing numbers vary from 5 to 15 students throughout the state, most schools stop at 10 students in a testing session.
Important facts to Know
Accommodations used within the classroom are acceptable for students as long as it is used consistently and is located within the IEP. Now modifications are not that easily used within formal assessments, formal assessments are state mandated and you cannot change these types of tests. So, if you give a student shorter reading passages within the IEP, that modification cannot be used during state tests. Teachers have to consider whether modifications within the classroom would comprise the integrity/validity of state tests. Although the terms accommodations and modifications are used interchangeably, they have two very different meanings when it comes to providing assessments to students with special needs.
What About Timing and Scheduling of Assessments?
Students may receive the same accommodations on assessments that they receive within the classroom. Accommodations may include, extended time(we use up to 1 hour), multiple test sessions(include a specific time frame) and may include breaks every few minutes(test 30 with a 3 minute break). These accommodations must also be included within the student's IEP or they cannot be used. Modifications are not given for timing and scheduling, because they would render the tests as invalid.
Amonica T. Graham
References
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