Your child may be eligible for accommodations or modifications to help them succeed in the classroom — and on standardized tests.
When school staff talk about accommodations and modifications for your child with disabilities, are you confused? What do these terms mean in a classroom? Has an alternate assessment been recommended for your child on a state- or district-wide test? What do you need to know when it comes to standardized tests used to make important decisions about your child?
Accommodations provide different ways for kids to take in information or communicate their knowledge back to you. The changes don’t alter or lower the standards or expectations for a subject or test, they change how your child learns the material or shows what they’ve learned. For example, preferred seating in a quiet, less distracting area of the room for a student who has difficulty with attention is an accommodation. The student is still learning the same material, they’re just doing it in a way that removes the barrier of distraction. Through the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 plan, classroom accommodations may be formally developed. In addition, some general education teachers agree informally to make accommodations for kids in their classes.
Prior to the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004), the term “modifications” referred to changes in the delivery, content, or instructional level of district-wide or statewide tests for students receiving special education services. In effect, modifications resulted in lowering the expectations and standards by which these students were assessed. Beginning with IDEA 2004, the term “modification” is no longer used in relation to district-wide and statewide testing, because the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) mandates that students with specific learning disabilities be tested using the same standards as those used for non-learning disabled kids. Replacing the term “modifications” with “alternative assessment” makes more explicit the different – i.e., less complex – standards of such tests.
Accommodations are adjustments to make sure kids have equal access to curriculum and a way to be successful. Accommodations to be used for classroom instruction and testing are defined in a student’s IEP. This is a required component of the student’s IEP as specified by IDEA, although IDEA refers to them as “supports.” When using accommodations, kids with disabilities are expected to meet the same standards set for all kids. For example: A child with delayed reading skills can participate in class discussions about a novel if they’ve used an audiobook instead of a print version.
Accommodations also offer alternate ways for kids to demonstrate what they’ve learned. For example: A child who struggles with writing and spelling skills may use assistive technology rather than pencil and paper write a report.
Teachers can create classroom conditions to help kids with ADHD pay attention. For a child who’s easily distracted by background noise, an accommodation that might be offered is seating the student away from the window and heater, or close to the teacher for prompting.
Modifications, on the other hand, mean that the curriculum and/or instruction that a student is learning is changed. When modifications are made, kids with disabilities are not expected to master the same academic content as others in the classroom.
For instance, a child who consistently struggles to learn the twenty-word spelling list every week may learn only ten words. This results in different standards for mastery — half the number of words as kids without a disability learn weekly.
A fifth grade child with a learning disability in math who isn’t ready to learn fractions and decimals may still be working on addition and subtraction. This means that their instructional grade-level has changed significantly from that of other kids in the classroom. So, grades do not necessarily tell parents the full story; it’s important to find out whether your child is achieving these grades in the standard curriculum for their grade level, or in a modified curriculum.
Federal law requires a student’s IEP to include a statement of accommodations required for participation in state- and district-wide assessments. Sometimes these assessments carry “high stakes” for students — they help decide important matters, such as whether your child goes on to the next grade level or graduates from high school with a regular diploma. Attaching student stakes to performance on state and district assessments is a state decision and is not a requirement of IDEA or ESSA. However, states are required by IDEA to issue guidelines/policy on appropriate assessment accommodations; and test makers usually provide a list of reasonable accommodations that won’t interfere with test validity, so that they can guarantee that the test actually measures what it’s supposed to measure.
Some classroom (instructional) accommodations may not be allowed on state or district assessments, because their use would invalidate the score on the test by compromising the measurement of the target skill. For example:
In general, any accommodations listed on the IEP must be delivered consistently — that is, at all times, and under all types of circumstances in which it’s needed. However, a student’s IEP should differentiate between accommodations for instruction and accommodations for assessment — and parents should understand the different consequences of each for their child.
If a child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) team determines that the child can’t participate in the regular state or district assessment (even with appropriate accommodations) and, therefore, will participate by taking an alternate assessment, the IEP team must develop a written statement of why the child cannot participate in the regular assessment, and why the team has determined that a particular alternate assessment is appropriate for the child. If your child is receiving special education services you should be aware of the important consequences of the child taking an assessment other than the regular assessment that all students take.
Updated August 2024
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