Choosing Accommodations
How do accommodations used for assessment
differ from those used for instruction?
Why are there some instructional accommodations
I can’t recommend for my student on a state test?
There is a relationship between accommodations for instruction and assessment:
- Accommodations for assessment promote access to test content. Accommodations for instruction promote a student’s learning in the general curriculum, and English development.
- Students should have experience using accommodations in the classroom. Not only do accommodations promote access to curricular content, but students also need practice using accommodations before test day.
- Some instructional accommodations may be inappropriate for testing because they interfere with the knowledge and skills that the test is intended to measure. For example, a calculator would be inappropriate on a test intended to measure a student’s ability to complete mathematical operations (e.g., adding, subtracting, multiplying, etc.), given that the calculator would interfere with the construct that the test is intended to measure. State policies determine the accommodations that may be used for content area tests.
