Title: The Understanding and Use of Accommodations for Instruction and Assessment
Authors: Kathy Dow-Burger, Froma Roth, Patricia Ritter, Susan Barnett, Nan Bernstein Ratner
Speaker: Kathy Dow-Burger
Date: September 16, 2013; 12-1 PM
Room: LeFrak Hall Room 0135
Abstract:
The classroom teacher has primary responsibility for implementing a student’s accommodations after the Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting. Not only is it essential that teachers, both in special and general education, become familiar with classroom and testing accommodations, it is important that other personnel such as teacher’s aides, one-to-one instructors, speech-language pathologists (SLPs), and other related services staff understand and use them. Accommodations are based on individual student needs and are documented in IEPs. School personnel are accountable to various Federal and State laws (e.g., Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504; Equal Access to Grade-level Content) for the provision of accommodations. Accommodations must be individualized to classroom content, test circumstances, test formats and test execution to enable eligible students to have equal access to academic content. Therefore, staff training is crucial on the proper administration and evaluation of accommodations for both instruction and assessment.
This research project reports the findings from a study of 39 service providers to generate recommendations for both current and future clinical practice research needs. The study examined the effectiveness of an in-service training program aimed at increasing awareness and use of accommodation needs and approaches, counterbalancing training order in two conditions. Pre- and post-training test results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the explicit training in improving teachers and related service providers’ knowledge of accommodations.
