Martha Thurlow and Yi-Chen Wu
July 2017
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Thurlow, M. L., & Wu, Y.-C. (2017). 2014-2015 APR snapshot #14: Assessment accommodations use by students receiving special education services. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
Assessment accommodations are changes in testing materials or procedures that allow students to show their knowledge and skills rather than the effects of their disabilities. This brief provides information on the number of students with disabilities using accommodations and the performance of these students on the general statewide assessment used for Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) accountability. Using federally submitted data from the 2014-2015 school year, we present information on accommodations for reading and mathematics statewide assessments administered to grade 8 students (and grade 4 to show a comparison to grade 8 data). Figures displaying statewide accommodations data for other grades are provided in this report via links following each figure. Data tables for all grade levels are available from NCEO at nceo.info/Resources/publications/APRsnapshot/data.
Throughout this report, we use the term “students with disabilities” to refer to students receiving special education services. Thus, students on 504 accommodation plans are not included in these analyses.
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Figure 1 shows the percentage of students with disabilities in regular states using accommodations during statewide reading and mathematics assessments in grade 8. The states are ordered from those that have the highest percentages of students using accommodations for the regular mathematics assessment to those that have the lowest percentages of students using accommodations for this assessment. The figure indicates that visible differences were evident between the percentage of students with disabilities using accommodations for mathematics and reading assessments in more than 10 states.
Thirteen states reported a difference in accommodation rates between content areas of more than 5 percentage points, and nine out of 13 states reported smaller percentages of students with disabilities used accommodations in reading than in math assessments. The figure also shows that in 13 states, more than 80 percent of students with disabilities used accommodations during both the statewide reading and mathematics assessments; in 10 states, 25 percent or fewer students used accommodations during testing in both reading and mathematics (see data available at nceo.info/Resources/publications/APRsnapshot/data). The percentages of students with disabilities using accommodations in mathematics was likely to be equal to or higher than the percentage of students using accommodations in reading assessments across all the grades.
Figure 1. Percentage of Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Reading and Mathematics Assessments in Regular States
Grade 3-7 and High School. Click the below images to enlarge.
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Figure 2 shows the percentage of students with disabilities in the unique states using accommodations during statewide reading and mathematics assessments in grade 8. Differences between reading and mathematics accommodations among the unique states that reported data in grade 8 (n = 8) was between 0 percentage points and 22.7 percentage points. Three of these states showed no difference between the percentages of students receiving accommodations for reading and for mathematics assessments. Five unique states had more than 80 percent of students using accommodations for both reading and mathematics. One unique state reported that 100% of students with disabilities used accommodations for both reading and mathematics assessments (see data tables available at nceo.info/Resources/publications/APRsnapshot/data).
Figure 2. Percentage of Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Reading and Mathematics Assessments in Unique States
Grade 3-7 and High School. Click the below images to enlarge.
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Figure 3 shows the percentage of students with disabilities in regular states using accommodations during statewide reading assessments in grade 4 and grade 8. The figure shows states ordered by their grade 4 rates of students using accommodations for the regular reading assessment. The figure indicates visible differences between the percentages of students with disabilities using accommodations in the two grade levels. In the thirteen states with differences greater than 10 percentage points, four states had higher percentages of students using accommodations in grade 4 than in grade 8. A total of 35 regular states had lower percentages of students with disabilities using reading accommodations in grade 4 than in grade 8. The figure also shows that in nine of these states had more than 75 percent of students with disabilities who used accommodations during the statewide reading assessment in both grade 4 and grade 8 (see data available at nceo.info/Resources/publications/APRsnapshot/data). Similar results were found for the percentage of students with disabilities using accommodations in grade 4 and grade 8 mathematics assessments (see Figure 4).
Figure 3. Percentage of Grade 4 and Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Reading Assessments in Regular States
Figure 4. Percentage of Grade 4 and Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Mathematics Assessments in Regular States
Figure 5 shows the percentage of students with disabilities in unique states (n = 6) using accommodations during statewide reading assessments in grade 4 and grade 8. Seven unique states reported data on the use of mathematics accommodations for both grades 4 and 8 (see Figure 6). Differences in accommodation rates in unique states that reported data were as much as 33.3 percentage points in reading and 50 percentage points in mathematics between grade 4 and grade 8 data (see data tables available at nceo.info/Resources/publications/APRsnapshot/data). In three of six unique states with reading accommodations data for both grade 4 and grade 8, the percentage was higher in grade 4 than in grade 8; the other three unique states data show the opposite direction. Similar results were found in mathematics assessments (see Figure 6).
Figure 5. Percentage of Grade 4 and Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Reading Assessments in Unique States
Figure 6. Percentage of Grade 4 and Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Mathematics Assessments in Unique States
Figure 7 shows performance of students with disabilities on grade 8 statewide reading regular assessments (in terms of the percentage of students performing at proficient or above) along with the percentage of students using accommodations in regular states. This figure indicates that there was no evident relationship between the percentage of students using accommodations and performance on the reading assessment. This conclusion should be interpreted with caution because it refers only to overall relationships. It does not speak to the performance of individual students who used accommodations.
Figure 7. Percentage of Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Scoring Proficient or Above and Percentage of Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Reading Assessments in Regular States
Grade 3 - 7 and High School Reading. Click the below images to enlarge.
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The same finding of no apparent relationship was true in unique states (see Figure 8). State data for unique states (n = 8) are available in data tables available at nceo.info/Resources/publications/APRsnapshot/data. The proficiency rates in unique state regular reading assessment for 8th graders ranged from as low as 0 percent to as high as 14.8 percent while accommodation rates varied (in four unique states the number of students were proficient were suppressed due to small cell size). For example, the unique state with the lowest reading proficiency rate did not have the highest rate of students with disabilities using accommodations on regular reading assessments across grade levels.
Figure 8. Percentage of Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Scoring Proficient or Above and Percentage of Grade 8 Students with Disabilities Using Accommodations in 2014-2015 Reading Regular Assessments in Unique States
Grade 3 - 7 and High School Reading. Click the below images to enlarge.
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Grades 3 - High School Math. Click the below images to enlarge.
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The information presented in this report summarizes the accommodations data submitted by states to the U.S. Department of Education for the year 2014-2015. Considerable variability among states was evident in the percentage of students with disabilities using accommodations on the grade 8 reading and mathematics statewide assessments. Further, in many states more students with disabilities received accommodations for the mathematics assessment than received them for the reading assessment. Also evident were differences in many states between the percentages of students using accommodations in grade 8 compared to grade 4, with a slight trend toward a higher percentage of students with disabilities using accommodations at the grade 8 level. Finally, there appeared to be no relation between the percentage of students with disabilities using accommodations and the percentage proficient on the grade 8 regular assessments.
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Lazarus, S. S., Thurlow, M. L., Lail, K. E., & Christensen, L. (2009). A longitudinal analysis of state accommodations policies: Twelve years of change, 1993-2005. Journal of Special Education, 43(2), 67-80.
Rogers, C. M., Lazarus, S. S., & Thurlow, M. L. (2016). A summary of the research on the effects of test accommodations: 2013-2014 (NCEO Report 402). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
Thurlow, M., & Vang, M. (2013). 2010-2011 APR snapshot #5: Assessment accommodations use by students receiving special education services. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
Vang, M., & Thurlow, M. (2015). 2011-2012 APR snapshot #8: Assessment accommodations use by students receiving special education services. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
Vang, M., Thurlow, M., & Altman, J. (2012). 2008-2009 APR snapshot #2: Assessment accommodations use by special education students. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
Wu, Y. C., & Thurlow, M. (2016). 2013-2014 APR snapshot #11: Assessment accommodations use by students receiving special education services. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
