Report
Working paper
The Validity of Oral Accommodation in Testing
NCES
Author(s):
Timothy J. Weston, U. of Colorado at Boulder
Publication date:
May 2003
Survey areas:
Publication number:
NCES 200306
Summary
This study examines the impact of oral presentation of a mathematics test on the performance of disabled and non-disabled students. It is an example of empirical research providing evidence for evaluating the validity and fairness of accommodations use. Both learning disabled and non-disabled students improved their performance under the accommodated conditions, although learning disabled students had greater gains. The presence of an effect for the regular classroom students suggests the possibility that irrelevant variance in the non-accommodated scores is overcome by the use of the accommodation for both groups of students.