The University of Iowa College of Education The University of IowaCollege of Education Iowa Testing Programs

Testing Students with Special Needs

Why Standard Procedures?

The test administration procedures and directions included in the Directions for Administration manual are the same as those followed in the standardization program from which norms were obtained. By following these same procedures, you will help to ensure that the meaning of your students' scores will not be distorted and that your ability to use the norms will not be compromised. If uniformity in test administration procedures is not maintained, the meaning of the test results may differ from school to school and classroom to classroom. If the directions given to students vary, some students may receive too little assistance from the test administrator and some may receive too much. The net effect will be to make some score interpretations inappropriate or misleading.

The use of a detailed set of directions not only ensures that the efforts of students and teachers will yield meaningful information, but it also makes the task of administering the tests easier. The directions specify what to say, when to say it, what to do, and when to do it. The directions script should be followed exactly.

Accommodations and Modifications

The primary goal of using the ITED should be to obtain information that will have value for planning and implementing instruction. Occasionally, however, the standardized test administration procedures must be changed so that the best possible information can be obtained for particular students. That is, for individual students with certain learning disabilities or with certain physical or cognitive limitations, tests administered under standard conditions are likely to yield relatively useless information. Under such circumstances, it is reasonable to change the standard administration procedures in ways that will permit meaningful achievement information to be obtained. Nearly always, a student's IEP (Individualized Education Program) should be the guide to whether to accommodate and how to do it.

For students with impaired vision, for example, large print and Braille versions of the tests are available. Some students may have physical disabilities that make it very difficult to mark on the standard answer folder. In such cases, an enlarged answer folder could be provided, or an assistant could record answers on the answer folder for them. Still other students may need to have time limits extended because they use a magnifying reader or because other limitations make their rate of work exceptionally slow.

These are all illustrations of situations that may call for accommodations -- special arrangements, nonstandard conditions, or adjusted administration procedures. The purpose of an accommodation is to reduce entirely, or in part, the influence of a student's disability on his or her test performance. The goal of successful accommodation is to interpret the student's test results as though there was no disability at all. Such interpretation requires decisions by the IEP team that neither give an advantage nor a disadvantage to the student during testing. Each school must establish its own policies to address such situations, and each relevant team of educators -- teacher, counselor, and administrator -- must exercise judgment on a case-by-case basis. Ordinarily, an IEP should be written to account for the need for assessment accommodations. Adaptations should be rare occurrences that are devised to accommodate individuals; they would almost never be appropriate for an entire class of students.

When special circumstances result in changes in test administration procedures, the test administrator should make a written record of the changes, place that record in the test files, and provide a copy of that record to anyone with whom the scores are shared. Then anyone who uses the scores will be aware of the special arrangements and can interpret the scores accordingly. Since the published norms are not always applicable to scores obtained under nonstandard conditions, anyone using the scores must be aware that the grade equivalents, percentile ranks, and other derived scores could be misleading in these circumstances. However, regardless of the changes made, percentile ranks can still be used to identify relative strengths and weaknesses in skill areas. Also, year-to-year growth can be estimated with developmental scores (e.g., grade equivalents) as long as the nonstandard administration procedures have been consistent from year to year.

Educators who are uncertain about the need to offer accommodations or to make modifications for an individual student or about the expected effect of particular changes on test performance should consult the student's IEP or a specialist who has the relevant professional expertise on such matters.

Testing High School Students with the ITBS

It may be more appropriate to use levels of the ITBS for some high school students rather than the ITED. However, in view of the emphasis on measuring developmental skills with the ITED, ninth-grade students who had tested the previous year with a lower level of the ITBS should not automatically be given the next level of the ITBS in ninth grade. Because the content of the ITED is not course-specific, it might be appropriate to use Level 15 with such students. Only a careful examination of the test batteries under consideration can resolve this question. When the ITBS is used with high school students, it is important that the test task are age appropriate and that the reading materials are reasonably matched with the social maturity level of the students being tested. If this does not happen, many of the benefits noted above will not be realized.

When the ITBS is administered to high school students, it must be done separately from the ITED administration. The tests, time limits, and directions are not designed for combined testing.

Because the ITBS and ITED cannot be processed together within a single grade group in the same scoring order at the Riverside Scoring Service, separate orders for scoring need to be submitted when the ITBS has been used with some high school students. Consequently, separate score reports will be prepared for the out-of-level group, and system and school ITED averages will not include the students in grades 9-12 who were administered the ITBS.

Testing English Language Learners (ELL)

When the ITBS or ITED is given to students district-wide, additional decisions sometimes need to be made with respect to testing English Language Learners, those whose first language is not English. These students should be tested for the same reasons that other students are tested: to obtain achievement information for making instructional decisions about them, to monitor their year-to-year progress in each of several areas of the curriculum, and to contribute to grade-group assessment information that is needed for a variety of purposes at the district level. Beyond the needs established by the local school district, there is a need to test all students in order for the district and state to comply with certain federal legislation, such as Title 1.

A first decision to make about an ELL is whether to administer the ITBS/ITED at all. A guideline often used is that an ELL will not be tested during his/her first year in an English-speaking learning environment. Another common guideline is that an ELL will be tested with certain accommodations if he/she has been in an English-dominant instructional program for 1-2 years. In such cases, the proper test level needs to be selected for the student and then accommodations like those used during instruction should be considered. A third common guideline is that an ELL who has been in an English-dominant learning environment for at least three years will be tested, perhaps with some minor accommodations. Each of these guidelines should be applied on an individual basis; a decision should not be made on the basis of time alone.

When accommodations seem to be needed for testing an ELL, any of several might be considered. Which accommodations to use should be determined by considering the ones used in day-to-day instructional activities or classroom assessments. In no case should an accommodation be used for the first time with a student during the administration of the ITBS or ITED. Some accommodations that are used with ELLs include:

  • allowing extra time to complete the test.
  • allowing the use of a translation dictionary during testing.
  • reading parts or all of the test. (This should not be done with tests of reading vocabulary or reading comprehension.)
  • providing word pronunciations or word meanings when such help does not interfere with the subject matter or skills being tested. (Offering meanings of science terms used on a science test would not be appropriate.)
  • a combination of the above.

The purpose of testing should be to obtain information that will be useful for making instructional decisions and determining the extent of student progress in the curriculum of the school. Accommodations should only be used when they help to reduce the effect of the student's English language deficits that would interfere with obtaining accurate information about the student's achievement. When selected properly, the use of accommodations can still permit the interpretation of the student's percentile ranks and grade equivalents in the same manner in which they are interpreted for others.