Developing Accommodations Aligned to Internationally Benchmarked Standards and Assessments

1. Developing Accommodations Aligned to Internationally Benchmarked Standards and Assessments Sheryl Lazarus and Martha Thurlow OSEP Project Directors’ Conference July 15-17, 2013

2. Overview The Consortia and their accommodations policies Results of an analysis of states’ accommodations policies Conclusions Discussion

3. Status of States Adoption

4. Smarter Balanced States

5. Draft Consortia Manuals PARRC PARCC Accommodations Manual http://ca539dfd55636c55e922-fd4c048d1c793e15a27f954b34a49d25.r49.cf1.rackcdn.com/PARCCDraftAccommodationsManualforSWDEL.pdf Smarter Balanced Accessibility and Accommodations Guidelines

6. NCEO Accommodations Snapshots 2012 State Policies for Accommodations Used to Deliver Assessments Orally (NCEO Synthesis Report) Available at www.nceo.info

7. Data Summarized for: • Accommodations: • Human Reader • Text to Speech • Audio Recording • Content Areas: • ELA/reading • Math • Accommodations for: • Directions • Items • Passages

8. Key Findings • Most states allowed directions to be read aloud by a Human Reader on reading/English language arts (ELA) (n=36) and math assessments (n=36); some states also had policies that allowed directions to be delivered orally by Text to Speech or Pre-recorded Audio. • For reading/ELA assessments, many states’ policies only allowed the delivery of assessment items or passages orally in certain circumstances or with implications for scoring.

9. Key Findings, Cont. • Some state policies addressed who could deliver the accommodation and what test security measures needed to be in place. • The policies of a few states indicated that Text to Speech was preferred over Human Reader due to test security issues and to help ensure standardized delivery.

10. Key Findings, Cont. • The policies of a few states also indicated how accessibility tools that were different from those in the test platform, but which were normally used for instruction, could be used.

11. Conclusions • The policies for accommodations used to deliver assessments orally being developed by the consortia may differ substantially from the policies currently in place in some states. States and the consortia will need to figure out how to successfully transition to the new policies. For example, teachers may need training on how to select, implement, and evaluate accommodations used to deliver an assessment orally. The evolving assessment system provides a wonderful opportunity to thoughtfully develop a plan for transitioning to new policies that will result in improved accommodations decision-making.

12. Other NCEO Accommodations Snapshots • Available soon at www.nceo.info • 2013 State Accommodations Polices for: • Scribe • Speech-to-text • Spell checker • Calculator

13. Discussion Questions for Session Participants How can states successfully transition to new accommodations policies aligned to internationally benchmarked assessments? What else needs to happen at the consortia, state, and local levels to help ensure that students with disabilities can meaningfully access instruction and assessments? What data need to be collected to evaluate how accommodations are working?