States’ Accommodations Policies and Development of Alternate Assessments Based on Modified Achievement Standards

Abstract

The characteristics of a state’s accommodations policy may affect a state’s decision about whether to develop an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS). A very restrictive accommodations policy may make it more difficult for some students to participate in the state’s regular assessment used for accountability purposes. Descriptive discriminant analysis was used to identify whether differences in the number of allowed accommodations in five categories (presentation, equipment and materials, response, scheduling and timing, setting) differentiated between states that planned to offer an AA-MAS and those that did not. The results of this study provide preliminary evidence that the number of presentation accommodations a state’s policy allowed may be related to the decision the state made about whether to develop an AA-MAS.

Keywords

alternate assessment accommodations accountability

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