Kids with Disabilities Should Get Special Testing Accommodations (Essay Sample)

Kids with Disabilities Should Get Special Testing Accommodations
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Introduction
In the 4th November, 2010 edition of the New York Times, Moore (2010) explored the suitability of the special testing accommodations. Students with learning disabilities are required to apply special accommodations from relevant bodies but some of these requests are denied. Moore (2010) estimates that ACT approves about 92% of applicants while SAT 85% of the applicants. These statistics indicate that special testing accommodations are becoming popular in the United States, but this trend is being criticized by some researchers. In this article, Moore (2010) alleges that some of the white and affluent students receive special testing accommodations, creating suspicions of exaggerated or non-existed disabilities. Other problems exist including the lack of proper regulation and lack of consensus on what constitutes disability. This paper argues that despite these challenges, students with learning disabilities should continue being provided with special testing accommodations.
Background
In the world today, there is controversy over whether; persons with disabilities should be given special testing accommodations or not. Once a child is diagnosed with a learning disability he or she is certified by the IEP team to receive special testing accommodations. The preferential treatment accorded to the special persons is permitted by the IDEA. The IDEA is a federal law requiring public schools to provide Free Appropriate Public Education to persons with disabilities. Under the act, schools are required to perform a scientific assessment to determine whether children need special education services or not.
The preferential treatment accorded to the school-going children is broken down into several categories. The first category is related to the presentation, whereby school going children are provided with the right equipment and are facilitated to complete the assessments. Presentation is enhanced by providing the affected students with designated readers, providing the instructions in large prints and reducing the number of items per page. The second category is related to capturing the response from the students. It is a well known fact that disabled students may have problems responding to the questions asked by the examiners. It is for this reason that they are allowed to give verbal responses rather than writing the answers. Some of the schools also allow the disabled learners to give the responses through the computer. The third category is related to the improvements made to enhance the test setting. Some of the schools provide their students with preferential seating, special lighting and acoustics, and spaces with minimal distractions. To encourage the performance of the disabled persons, schools also allow them to sit for tests in small groups or in private rooms. These initiatives provide the disabled persons with a less-intimidating environment. Timing is considered an important element when dealing with disabled persons. In order to ensure the disabled students successfully complete the tests, some schools provide them with frequent breaks and extend the allotted time. Some of the schools also administer the test in several timed sessions or for an elongated period of time. Some of the disabled students prefer doing a test in specific times of the day or taking the subtests in different order. Others receive test preparation, on-task prompts and reasonable accommodation depending on the situation.
Argument for special testing accommodations
Persons with disabilities require specialized presentation formats including visual, tactile, audio and multi-sensory facilities. Recorded tests are produced on audiotapes, compact discs and electronic files. Screen readers could also be availed to the students to change digitized text to synthesized speech. There are many other technologies and other components which are used for special testing accommodations. The section below argues why schools should adopt special testing accommodations using the available literature.
3.1 Extended Time Testing Accommodation
The use of special testing accommodations is supported by an article titled, how much time? A review of the literature on extended test time for postsecondary students with learning disabilities. In this article, Ofiesh and Hughes (2002) argues that students in schools deserve to be given Extended Time Testing Accommodation, one the commonly used strategies to help students with learning disabilities. Under this arrangement, students with disabilities receive up to twice the standard examination time. One of the major rationales behind extended test times is that students with disabilities take more time to complete a variety of tasks than students without disabilities. Giving students with disabilities more time to complete the test is supposed to compensate for the slower processing speed. While supporting Extended Time Testing Accommodation, Ofiesh and Hughes (2002) find that when provided with more time, disabled students are able to attain almost similar scores as their peers. However, researchers often argue that students with disabilities should not be given too much extra time as doing so would result in test scores that are invalid of academic ability. This means that school should come up with an appropriate way of deciding the appropriate extended test times. This should be done with the help of the disability service providers. The assessment should evaluate the impact of the disability on the victim and the functional limitations caused by the disability. Already, some of the studies have suggested that students should always be given one-half to double time to finish the test.
The need to give students with ADHD and other students is again revisited in an article by Brown, Reichel and Quinlan (2011). The three researchers conducted a study to examine the difficulties of adolescent students and to propose ways through which their academic performance can be improved. Brown, Reichel and Quinlan (2011) used a sample of 145 adolescents diagnosed with DSM-IV ADHD. The participants underwent comprehensive clinical and psycho-educational evaluation to determine whether they should be given extended test time or not. Brown, Reichel and Quinlan (2011) found out that under standard test time, about half of the respondents failed to complete the comprehension tests. In addition, under the standard test time, less than half of the respondents were able to attain an average score (Brown, Reichel & Quinlan, 2011). However, after being given extended test times, the number of the disabled students who were able to complete the test increased drastically. The results of this comprehensive study support the need to allow the students with learning disabilities more time to complete exams and assessments.
The available literature has also established that students with disabilities face many challenges unlike their peers. For instance, persons with ADHD report difficulties in reading and hence their ability to complete tests and assignments within the allotted time is greatly impaired. Student with disabilities also exhibit marked slowness in completing the assigned readings and are sometimes forced to re-read texts in order to fully grasp the meaning. According to Johnson (2000) their recalling ability is also very low and they face difficulties when using their executive functions. A number of studies have examined the effect of the slow processing speed on the ability of the students to complete the tests within the stipulated time. One of the common measures of processing speed is the rapid automatized naming (RAN) test. The students are exposed to familiar stimuli such as letters, digits and colors in a random sequence. However, students with learning disabilities take time in comprehending the text.
3.2 Oral administration
While the available literature supports the use of the extended test times, the available literature also indicates the importance of oral administration. This interventions entails the use of read aloud protocols either using technological tools such as computers, videos and audio tapes. Oral administration of tests is supported by many studies. For instance, Pitoniak and Royer (2001) evaluated the impact of the read-aloud protocol on the test performance of middle school students with disabilities. Pitoniak and Royer (2001) used a sample of 260 students: 98 sixth graders, 84 seven graders and 78 eighth graders. At the end of the study, Pitoniak and Royer (2001) found out that students with disabilities performed better under read-aloud conditions. These findings are replicated in a similar study which conducted by Elbaum (2007). The study used a sample of 625 middle and high school students in the Southeastern United States. All the students were put under testing accommodations. The findings of this study indicate that under read-aloud accommodation, students perform better. The study further established that the effect of using oral accommodation on the test score is greater for the learning disabled students than for the regular students. These results are supported by many other researchers who find that learning disabled students should be placed under accommodated conditions. Failing to do so, no doubt contravenes on their rights and puts them at a disadvantaged compared to their no-disabled peers.
Indeed, oral administration is supported not only by the researchers, but also the teachers. This kind accommodation is suitable for students with print disabilities and English learners with stronger listening capabilities than reading comprehension skills. Beside the teachers, many other studies support the use of audio presentation especially in students with low reading fluency. According to Johnson (2...