Best practices for determining accommodations for students

For educators working with multilingual learners with disabilities, choosing the right accommodations on WIDA assessments can feel complicated. WIDA Assessment Researcher Anna Rhoad-Drogalis, Lead Assessment Specialist Kristen Burton and Director of Assessment Representation Research Laurene Christensen have new research that sheds light on how educators make these decisions, challenges they face and how best practices can support students in showing what they know and can do.

Through the study, Anna, Kristen and Laurene set out to better understand the following:

• Who makes decisions about accommodations for students with disabilities on WIDA assessments
• What support educators receive in the decision-making process
• How familiar educators are with specific WIDA accommodations and what questions they have

They created a study that combined a large-scale survey of 669 educators with follow-up interviews with 31 educators. Although analysis of the data is ongoing, this article outlines early key takeaways from this research and what they mean for your teaching practice.

Match Accommodations to Classroom Practice

Accommodations used on ACCESS assessments should mirror strategies that students use in the classroom. The most effective testing accommodations are the ones students already use every day. If a student relies on extended time, scribes or breaks in the classroom, those supports should carry over to WIDA assessments. A mismatch between classroom and testing accommodations can lead to confusion or stress for a student.

Collaborate

Making decisions about accommodations for multilingual learners should be a collaborative process. Special education teachers, teachers of multilingual learners, administrators and speech-language pathologists can all play a role.

Families should also be engaged in the process. Families often look to educators to take the lead when it comes to decisions for accommodations on ACCESS. Approximately 18% of the educators that participated in interviews observed that families often trusted educators to act in their child’s best interest and were unlikely to question recommendations. This pointed to the importance of building accessible and inclusive communication strategies to support more informed and participatory engagement among parents of multilingual learners. Families may have insights on how they accommodate their multilingual learners at home that can have useful implications for the school environment. The WIDA article "How to work with families of multilingual learners with disabilities” offers tips for building meaningful relationships with these families while fostering a sense of belonging.

It’s important to include students in the process, too. Study findings indicate that some educators engaged in informal, one-on-one conversations or check-ins with students about their accommodation preferences, needs and past experiences with WIDA ACCESS. These reflective dialogues served as a foundation for decision-making about future test administrations. This practice also provided students with an opportunity to develop self-advocacy skills. Educators’ ability to involve students in the process also depended on students’ grade level and their familiarity with the ACCESS test. During study interviews, about 43% of the educators reported that student involvement in decisions about ACCESS accommodations tended to increase with age and developmental maturity.

Learn About All Available Accommodations

WIDA has many accommodations available to help students. Some are better known and understood than others.

The study survey revealed educators need the most help understanding the following accommodations:

• In-person human reader
• Scribe
• Recording device and transcription
• Extended speaking test response time
• Extended testing of a domain over multiple days

You’ll find detailed explanations for all of these in the Accessibility and Accommodations Manual.

Use Free WIDA Resources and Tools

WIDA offers the following resources to help you navigate this work:

• The WIDA Accessibility and Accommodations Manual, as mentioned above, outlines WIDA’s approach to accessibility and details the accommodations available on WIDA ACCESS and WIDA Screener.
• WIDA Accommodations Checklists are available for different assessments for IEP teams to use to guide collaborative decision-making.

Final Thoughts

Accommodations allow students with disabilities to fully demonstrate their skills and knowledge — they do not change what the test is measuring. When educators collaborate, engage students and families and lean on WIDA’s resources, accommodations can increase student confidence, reduce test-related anxiety and support a more accurate measure of learning.

Special thanks to WIDA’s summer intern I-Chun Vera Hsiao, who helped with data analysis on this project.