Special education students and Limited English Proficient students are entitled to take the test if parents want them to. DCPS offers four levels of of accommodation to student needs. The accommodations used should be those the child is accustomed to using in the classroom. Many parents of special needs students have mixed feelings about testing. They want the system to teach their child as though the child has intellectual value and they believe that if the child is tested and the test counts, the school has an incentive to work harder to teach him or her.
Similar issues arise with limited English students.
Since parents want their children to become fluent in English, parents want the system pressured to teach English well. The consequences of failing the test, however, are real. On one hand, parents do not want to see their children fail. When the Stanford 9 is used to determine promotion to the next grade, parents become concerned that their children will fail the test. On another hand, principals do not want low test scores because part of their evaluation as a principal depends on students' improving their test scores.