Effects of an oral testing accommodation on the mathematics performance of secondary students with and without learning disabilities.

This study compared the performance of students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on a mathematics test using a standard administration procedure and a read-aloud accommodation. Analyses were conducted on the test scores of 625 middle and high school students (n = 388 with LD) on two equivalent 30-item multiple-choice tests. Whereas mean scores for students both with and without LD were higher in the accommodated condition, students without disabilities benefited significantly more from the accommodation (ES = 0.44) than students with LD (ES = 0.20). In addition, effect sizes from the present study were combined meta-analytically with those of previous studies. Results of the meta-analysis revealed that for elementary students, oral accommodations on a mathematics test yielded greater gains for students with LD than for students without disabilities: for secondary students, the converse was true. Findings of the study are discussed in relation to the question of the validity of an oral accommodation on mathematics tests for students both with and without disabilities.

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One of the most important accomplishments of recent U.S. federal education legislation has been to promote the full participation of students with disabilities in state educational accountability systems. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendments of 1990, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the most recent reauthorization of IDEA as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA; 2004) have affirmed the principle of including students with disabilities in statewide assessments, as well as the need to offer appropriate accommodations or alternate testing procedures, as necessary, to support students' participation.

Over the past 15 years, the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) has been documenting states' policies and practices regarding the participation of students with disabilities on statewide assessments. In its latest report, Thompson, Johnstone, Thurlow, and Altman (2005) stated that one of the six key factors cited by states as contributing to positive trends in the participation and performance of students with disabilities has been the development and provision of accommodation guidelines and training. In addition, recent studies have catalogued the rapidly evolving use of accommodations on statewide tests (e.g., Johnson, Kimball, Brown, & Anderson, 2001; Thurlow, House, Scott, & Ysseldyke, 2000).

Given the serious consequences of test outcomes for states, districts, schools, and individual students, the validity of interpretations of test scores when students are given particular accommodations has been a critical question in both the research and policy arenas (Thurlow & Bolt, 2001; Thurlow, House, et al., 2000; Thurlow, McGrew, Tindal, Thompson, Ysseldyke, & Elliott, 2000; Tindal, 2002; Tindal & Fuchs, 1999). There is general consensus that to be considered a valid accommodation, a modification in test administration should remove disability-related variance without affecting construct-relevant variance. For example, allowing students with motor difficulties to dictate their solutions to mathematics problems to a scribe addresses the students' specific disability without affecting their mathematics skills. This accommodation would be expected to improve the test performance of students with motor impairments only. If the accommodation were given to students without motor impairments, no impact on test performance would be expected to result.