Transcript: Ryan Kettler, PhD

Listen as Ryan Kettler discusses this issue in more detail (time: 3:39).

Basically, it’s any change made to a test or the way the test is administered in order to overcome an impairment that a student has that keeps them from being able to take the test, that yields a score that we can use, a score that represents their ability level on the knowledge or skills that are being targeted by the test. Students with disabilities often have functional impairments that keep them from being able to show what they know and what they can do on a test the same way that students without disabilities can show what they know and what they can do on a test. Any test that you would take has a skill that’s being targeted, whether it be algebra or biology or reading comprehension. But it also has a number of skills that aren’t specifically being measured or targeted by the test but are still necessary in order for the student to take the test, and those are called access skills.

What happens is, if a student doesn’t meet the minimal level on those access skills, they’re not able to show what they know and can do on the target skill. So think of this algebra test that has these long story problems written at grade level, and a student that doesn’t read at grade level is taking the test, trying to show what she or he knows and can do in algebra. If the student can’t read the test, the score is not going to reflect their algebra ability. It’s going to reflect a deficit in reading. We want to make the test score as reflective of ability on the target skill, in this case algebra, as we can. I may prescribe an accommodation that the student have a read-aloud accommodation. So either the computer voiceover reads the test aloud to him, or a person sits with him and reads the test. That accommodation is put in place so that I can get a better score indicating what the student knows or can do, but that accommodation is not intended to remediate the student’s reading problem. So I think that what’s important to clarify is that accommodations are not an intervention.

When we give accommodations on tests, the end goal is not necessarily to make students’ scores higher. The end goal is to make students’ scores more accurately reflective of their abilities on that targeted skills and knowledge. In many cases, because we are addressing these functional impairments that are lowering students’ scores, they are going to score higher when we give them greater access. But sometimes, if you’re delivering an appropriate accommodation, the student will have more access, but he won’t get a higher score because he actually doesn’t have the knowledge or the skills that are being tested.

We want scores that reflect that knowledge or skills or reflect the lack of that knowledge or skills. So, in terms of access, the thing that I think is really important to know is that when we improve access the scores won’t always go up. We’re not just trying to give more success. We’re trying to give better access to take the test the same way students who don’t have disabilities take the test. And the access to taking a test is the opportunity to have that test accurately reflect what a person knows or can do.