A student is eligible for any of the accommodations listed on the following page if that student has also receives the same accommodation for instruction in the content area for at lest three months Using an accommodation during assessment which is not used during instruction may be detrimental to the student's performance on the assessment. For example, giving a test orally to a non-auditory learner may be worse than having the student read the test. Keep in mind that the assessment includes material that spans a range of difficulty levels and some of the tasks are below the intended grade level. The following tables show the accommodations that will be available for the 1998 assessments. Research is currently under way on the effectiveness and validity of various assessment accommodations and the list may be amended for future assessments.
Accommodations are content-area specific.
Therefore, only those accommodations the student requires for the specific content area being assessed may be selected. The possible effects on the student of allowing the accommodations must be considered. Some accommodations may not help the student, and may actually have the opposite effect. A student may be allowed more than one accommodation. For example, a student who requires a Braille version or a scribe will probably also require extra time.