The effects of accommodations on standardized test scores in mathematics for students with special needs and English language learners

The No Child Left Behind Legislation requires local education agencies to provide evidence of adequate yearly progress (AYP) or risk sanctions, including the loss of Title 1 funding. In the state of California, many schools fail to reach their AYP targets because of the performance of a single subgroup: students with disabilities. Providing these students with appropriate and valid accommodations to standard testing conditions is a pressing policy issue. This study explores the question of whether the combination of read aloud, paraphrasing, and repetition is an effective and valid accommodation on a curriculum-based math assessment for students diagnosed with a prevalent disability: auditory processing disorder. This study further examines the relationship between accommodations and (a) English language learner (ELL) status, and (b) the language demands of the assessment.;To investigate these questions, a 2X2 fixed effects, randomized experimental design was employed at a local middle school. The sample for this study consists of 75 sixth grade students: 32 regular education and 43 special education. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two testing conditions: with oral accommodations (treatment) or without oral accommodations (control), resulting in four research groups. Each group was administered a 22-item math test drawn from a published McGraw-Hill test bank. Students in the treatment condition generally performed more poorly than the control group, and overall the study results do not support the interaction hypothesis. However there is some preliminary evidence that the accommodation package benefits students at the lowest EL proficiency level.