Kids With Disabilities Should Get Special Testing Accommodations - Research Paper Example

Kids with Disabilities Should Get Special Testing Accommodations Introduction In the 4th November, edition of the New York Times, Moore (2010) explored the suitability of the special testing accommodations. Students with learning disabilities are required to apply special accommodations from relevant bodies but some of these requests are denied. Moore (2010) estimates that ACT approves about 92% of applicants while SAT 85% of the applicants. These statistics indicate that special testing accommodations are becoming popular in the United States, but this trend is being criticized by some researchers. In this article, Moore (2010) alleges that some of the white and affluent students receive special testing accommodations, creating suspicions of exaggerated or non-existed disabilities. Other problems exist including the lack of proper regulation and lack of consensus on what constitutes disability. This paper argues that despite these challenges, students with learning disabilities should continue being provided with special testing accommodations. 2. Background In the world today, there is controversy over whether; persons with disabilities should be given special testing accommodations or not. Once a child is diagnosed with a learning disability he or she is certified by the IEP team to receive special testing accommodations. The preferential treatment accorded to the special persons is permitted by the IDEA. The IDEA is a federal law requiring public schools to provide Free Appropriate Public Education to persons with disabilities. Under the act, schools are required to perform a scientific assessment to determine whether children need special education services or not. The preferential treatment accorded to the school-going children is broken down into several categories. The first category is related to the presentation, whereby school going children are provided with the right equipment and are facilitated to complete the assessments. Presentation is enhanced by providing the affected students with designated readers, providing the instructions in large prints and reducing the number of items per page. The second category is related to capturing the response from the students. It is a well known fact that disabled students may have problems responding to the questions asked by the examiners. It is for this reason that they are allowed to give verbal responses rather than writing the answers. Some of the schools also allow the disabled learners to give the responses through the computer. The third category is related to the improvements made to enhance the test setting. Some of the schools provide their students with preferential seating, special lighting and acoustics, and spaces with minimal distractions. To encourage the performance of the disabled persons, schools also allow them to sit for tests in small groups or in private rooms. These initiatives provide the disabled persons with a less-intimidating environment. Timing is considered an important element when dealing with disabled persons. In order to ensure the disabled students successfully complete the tests, some schools provide them with frequent breaks and extend the allotted time. Some of the schools also administer the test in several timed sessions or for an elongated period of time. Some of the disabled students prefer doing a test in specific times of the day or taking the subtests in different order. Others receive test preparation, on-task prompts and reasonable accommodation depending on the situation. 3. Argument for special testing accommodations Persons with disabilities require specialized presentation formats including visual, tactile, audio and multi-sensory facilities. Recorded tests are produced on audiotapes, compact discs and electronic files. Screen readers could also be availed to the students to change digitized text to synthesized speech. There are many other technologies and other components which are used for special testing accommodations. The section below argues why schools should adopt special testing accommodations using the available literature. 3.1 Extended Time Testing Accommodation The use of special testing accommodations is supported by an article titled, how much time? A review of the literature on extended test time for postsecondary students with learning disabilities. In this article, Ofiesh and Hughes (2002) argues that students in schools deserve to be given Extended Time Testing Accommodation, one the commonly used strategies to help students with learning disabilities. Under this arrangement, students with disabilities receive up to twice the standard examination time. One of the major rationales behind extended test times is that students with disabilities take more time to complete a variety of tasks than students without disabilities. Giving students with disabilities more time to complete the test is supposed to compensate for the slower processing speed. While supporting Extended Time Testing Accommodation, Ofiesh and Hughes (2002) find that when provided with more time, disabled students are able to attain almost similar scores as their peers. However, researchers often argue that students with disabilities should not be given too much extra time as doing so would result in test scores that are invalid of academic ability. This means that school should come up with an appropriate way of deciding the appropriate extended test times. This should be done with the help of the disability service providers. The assessment should evaluate the impact of the disability on the victim and the functional limitations caused by the disability. Already, some of the studies have suggested that students should always be given one-half to double time to finish the test. The need to give students with ADHD and other students is again revisited in an article by Brown, Reichel and Quinlan (2011). The three researchers conducted a study to examine the difficulties of adolescent students and to propose ways through which their academic performance can be improved. Brown, Reichel and Quinlan (2011) used a sample of 145 adolescents diagnosed with DSM-IV ADHD. The participants underwent comprehensive clinical and psycho-educational evaluation to determine whether they should be given extended test time or not. Brown, Reichel and Quinlan (2011) found out that under standard test time, about half of the respondents failed to complete the comprehension tests. In addition, under the standard test time, less than half of the respondents were able to attain an average score (Brown, Reichel & Quinlan, 2011). However, after being given extended test times, the number of the disabled students who were able to complete the test increased drastically. The results of this comprehensive study support the need to allow the students with learning disabilities more time to complete exams and assessments. The available literature has also established that students with disabilities face many challenges unlike their peers. For instance, persons with ADHD report difficulties in reading and hence their ability to complete tests and assignments within the allotted time is greatly impaired. Student with disabilities also exhibit marked slowness in completing the assigned readings and are sometimes forced to re-read texts in order to fully grasp the meaning. According to Johnson (2000) their recalling ability is also very low and they face difficulties when using their executive functions. A number of studies have examined the effect of the slow processing speed on the ability of the students to complete the tests within the stipulated time. One of the common measures of processing speed is the rapid automatized naming (RAN) test. The students are exposed to familiar stimuli such as letters, digits and colors in a random sequence. However, students with learning disabilities take time in comprehending the text. 3.2 Oral administration While the available literature supports the use of the extended test times, the available literature also indicates the importance of oral administration. This interventions entails the use of read aloud protocols either using technological tools such as computers, videos and audio tapes. Oral administration of tests is supported by many studies. For instance, Pitoniak and Royer (2001) evaluated the impact of the read-aloud protocol on the test performance of middle school students with disabilities. Pitoniak and Royer (2001) used a sample of 260 students: 98 sixth graders, 84 seven graders and 78 eighth graders. At the end of the study, Pitoniak and Royer (2001) found out that students with disabilities performed better under read-aloud conditions. These findings are replicated in a similar study which conducted by Elbaum (2007). The study used a sample of 625 middle and high school students in the Southeastern United States. All the students were put under testing accommodations. The findings of this study indicate that under read-aloud accommodation, students perform better. The study further established that the effect of using oral accommodation on the test score is greater for the learning disabled students than for the regular students. These results are supported by many other researchers who find that learning disabled students should be placed under accommodated conditions. Failing to do so, no doubt contravenes on their rights and puts them at a disadvantaged compared to their no-disabled peers. Indeed, oral administration is supported not only by the researchers, but also the teachers. This kind accommodation is suitable for students with print disabilities and English learners with stronger listening capabilities than reading comprehension skills. Beside the teachers, many other studies support the use of audio presentation especially in students with low reading fluency. According to Johnson (2000) students prefer on-demand accommodations that they could select and control. In this regard, tests should be administered using audio or text-to-speech technology rather than human readers. Using read-aloud technology rather than human readers ultimately helps the disadvantaged students to catch up with their peers. The other major reason why oral administration should be done electronically is because human readers tend to frustrate the students. The positive effects associated with using computer-assisted oral presentation are well captured in a study conducted by Calhoon, Fuchs and Hamlett (2000). This study compared and contrasted four conditions: standard administration, teacher-read administration, computer-read administration and computer-read with video. At the end of the study, Calhoon, Fuchs and Hamlett (2000) concluded that computer-read administration leads to higher score improvements compared to the teacher-read administration. Using computers instead of the human readers also provided the students with anonymity. Based on the above literature is obvious that using read-aloud technology translates too many benefits. Firstly, read-aloud technology increases access to information to compensate for slower reading. Secondly, using audio-supported increases levels of comprehension while giving the disabled students an opportunity to learn and acquire content knowledge. Finally, audio-supported technology offers the readers choice and flexibility. 3.3 Setting Persons with disabilities sometimes require an environment where they can receive appropriate instruction. Teachers and the school administrators are required to incorporate modifications and services that will enable the students to meet the goals set out in the IEP. Changes in the educational settings are also required in order to address accessibility issues, behavior management and organization of space. Just to illustrate further, some of the students with learning disabilities may need an alternate response mode. Using assistive technology devices such as scribes may interfere with the other students, hence the need to create a different space for the students with disabilities. The importance of providing students with learning disabilities with a comfortable environment is supported by the available literature. Just to illustrate, some of the students having physical impairments should be provided with a barrier-free environment. Likewise, students with physical disabilities should be placed in buildings with guide rails ramps, elevators and automatic doors. More so, since students with disabilities require special equipment, it is important that they are allocated accessible workstations. Equally importantly, students with learning disabilities require a silent environment hence room should be acoustical. According to Johnson (2000) acoustical treatment reduces distractions and noises, hence allowing the students to concentrate in the test. Distractions can also be avoided by placing the students away from windows, heating and cooling vents. It is well acknowledged that children suffering from ADHD and other disabilities lack the necessary attentiveness to successfully complete the test. In addition, persons with ADHD display developmentally inappropriate degrees of impulsiveness and hyperactivity. Due these symptoms it becomes quite common for the ADHD patients to make careless mistakes in schoolwork and they find it hard sustaining attention in tasks and play activities. Secondly, the patients are unable to seat for extended period of time and are disruptive setting. Obviously it becomes hard to expect students with ADHD patients to conduct themselves as required during the exam time. They need to be allocated extra help, in order to operate effectively and avoid disrupting other students. During the tests, teachers could even place all students suffering from ADHD in small groups in order to give them the necessary attention. Even more importantly, the teachers should re-schedule tests if the students are incapable of staying alert or not in a position to be productive. 4. Argument against special testing accommodations While most of the researchers concur that students with disabilities should be given special testing accommodations, they are a few who disagree. Firstly, according to critics, special testing accommodations do not necessarily facilitate fair and accurate measurement of student knowledge and skills. Central to the discussion of fair and appropriate accommodation is the issue of test score validity. There is also a disagreement on what constitutes a far accommodation and how it can be matched with student level of disability. The idea of giving students with disabilities a differential boost has also been criticized because some of the interventions may end boosting the scores of students with disabilities more than those who are disabled. The criticism of special testing accommodations also results from the lack of consensus on the effectiveness of various interventions. According to Meloy, Deville and Frisbie (2002) there is no single accommodation which been proved to be beneficial to all students with disabilities. This means that the teachers must use a mix of the interventions, and lack of universality may end up favoring some of the students. Lack of fair and universal treatment of the disabled patients, is also disadvantageous to the poorly performing non-disable students. As it is the practice students suffering from the ADHD are required to provide evidence that they have basic impairments that negatively impact on their ability to perform optimally. Unfortunately, many students fail to meet this threshold because mostly, ADHD symptoms abate with medication. Licensing organizations also fail to accommodate the students if their condition is adequately alleviated with treatment. However, courts differ with the licensing organizations and have upheld the average person standard for determining disability. The lack of understanding between the licensing organizations and the justice system means that special testing accommodations should be abolished until a commonality is established. In the article titled, test accommodations for post-secondary students, Ranseen and Parks (2005) argue that allowing special testing accommodations will lead to the abuse of the practice. Just to illustrate, since the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted, accommodation request for entrance and licensing exams have highly increased. According to most of these requests are made by students diagnosed with learning disabilities, ADHD, anxiety and mood disorders. However, not everyone is satisfied with the testing organizations, and some of the students who are denied the accommodation requests have decided to sue the licensing boards. The ongoing tussle between the licensing boards and the disabled students revolves around the question of what constitutes a disability. It is on this basis that Meloy, Deville and Frisbie (2002) argues that special testing accommodations should be disallowed until the current confusion is addressed. Special testing accommodations have also been criticized due to the costs involved. As suggested earlier, some students with disabilities require assistive technology in order to allow them to sit for the exams. Buying the necessary assistive technology translates to higher school fees and results to unnecessary burden. Providing students with reasonable accommodations also impacts negatively on the testing organizations. As Meloy, Deville and Frisbie (2002) points out some of the some of the accommodations are burdensome in terms of maintain test security. 5. Conclusion In sum, it seems that students benefit immensely from special testing accommodations. Numerous studies indicate that score gains for disabled students under special testing accommodations are higher than score gains for students without disabilities. Based on these findings it seems that the disabled students should continue being provided with assistive technology, in order to ‘catch up’ with their non-disabled peers. However, there is lack of consensus on what constitutes a disability and which interventions should be permitted in schools. In addition, it is challenging for the schools to implement the test accommodations appropriately and identify the most suitable accommodations depending on the students’ needs. Despite these concerns, it is certain that provision of test accommodations is vital in promoting equity and validity in educational assessment. References Brown, E., Reichel, P. & Quinlan, D. (2011). Extended time improves reading comprehension test scores for adolescents with ADHD. Open Journal of Psychiatry, 1, 79-87 Calhoon, M. B., Fuchs, L.S., & Hamlett, C.L. (2000). Effects of computer-based test accommodations on mathematics performance assessments for secondary students with learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 23, 271-82. Elbaum, B. (2007). Effects of an oral testing accommodation on the mathematics performance of secondary students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Special Education, 40, 218 Johnson, E. S. (2000). The effects of accommodations on performance assessments. Remedial and Special Education, 21(5), 261–267. Meloy, L. L., Deville, C., & Frisbie, D. (2002). The effect of a read aloud accommodation on test scores of students with and without a learning disability in reading. Remedial and Special Education, 23(4), 248–255. Moore, A. (2010). Accommodations Angst. Retrieved from < http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/edlife/07strategy-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Ofiesh, N. & Hughes, C. (2002). How much time? A review of the literature on extended test time for post-secondary students with learning disabilities. Journal of Post secondary Education and Disability, 16(1), 2-16 Pitoniak, M, & Royer, J. (2001). Testing accommodations for examinees with disabilities: a review of psychometric, legal, and social policy issues. Review of Educational Research. 71 (1), 53-104. Ranseen, J. & Parks, G. (2005). Test accommodations for post-secondary students. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 11(1), 83-108 Read More