Help me fail: A study on testing accommodations for students with disabilities in writing assessments

Through the No Child Left Behind Act and amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, U.S. Congress, in an attempt to improve services for students with disabilities, has moved towards the inclusion of students with a disability in school accountability systems such as national and state assessments. Since schools are now being held accountable for educating special needs students with the goal of proficient performance on high-stakes testing, a clear understanding of how students with disabilities perform on assessments and why they perform as they do is imperative. The main goal of this study was to contribute to the currently limited amount of research in the area of writing accommodations provided on tests for students with a disability. The New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) is given annually to all participating New England State's 5th- and 8th-grade students and includes a writing assessment. The purpose of the causal-comparative study was to collect and compare the scores of 5th- and 8th-grade NECAP 2012 writing test scores of students with disabilities receiving testing accommodations to 5th- and 8th-grade NECAP 2012 writing test scores of students with disabilities not receiving testing accommodations in order to determine if testing accommodations related to student test performance. With regards to both 5th- and 8th-grade student scores, in every case in which there was a statistically significant difference in test scores, students receiving accommodations scored more poorly on average than students not receiving accommodations scored. Research in the area of not only writing but also reading and math has shown that students with a disability who receive accommodations often score significantly lower than students with a disability who do not receive accommodations. The results of this study confirm these findings. Further research is needed in this area in order to inform administrators and teachers when deciding which accommodations to recommend for students on the writing section of assessments.