Education Week - November 6, 2013 - 6

PARCC Field Tests to Lack Some Accommodations
Features would aid
special populations
By Christina A. Samuels
Some built-in student accommodations
planned for the commoncore
tests under development by
the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers
will not be available during spring
2014 field tests. That means one
less chance for developers to head
off problems before the online tests
officially launch in the 2014-15
school year, some analysts and advocates
warn.
The accommodations still under
development include a notepad tool
for students; word-prediction software,
which PARCC describes as a
"bank of frequently or recently used
words onscreen as a result of the
student entering the first few letters
of a word;" and general masking,
which allows students to create
a customized mask to cover portions
of the test items, if needed to eliminate
distraction.
Many accessibility features will
also not be ready for computers
that are using the Chrome operating
system, created by Google and
launched in 2009. In a document
outlining the technology requirements
schools must have to administer
the test, PARCC says that the
test developers are still in the process
of evaluating Chrome and plan
a future update.
Eighteen states and the District
of Columbia are members of PARCC.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment
Consortium, which is made up of 25
states, plans to have its built-in accommodations
ready for its own field
tests, said a representative from that
consortium. Smarter Balanced also
plans its field tests for spring 2014.
Such accommodations are intended
to enable students with disabilities
and English-language learners to
take part in assessments tied to the
Common Core State Standards. The
two consortia are the main groups
creating tests for the common core,
which covers English/language arts
and mathematics and has been adopted
by all but four states.
Potential Problems
Not having all the accommodations
ready for students to try them
out could lead to problems when the
tests launch formally for the 201415
school year, said Candace Cortiella,
the director of the Advocacy Institute
in Marshall, Va., in an email
message to Education Week.
"A conflict in accommodations is
a sure-fire way for schools to exclude
a whole bunch of students
with disabilities," she said. "Why
not confront those issues during
the field testing? Sweeping them
under the rug will only delay dealing
with a serious issue for students
with disabilities in the move
to PARCC/SBAC while ensuring that
the field tests will not include an
adequately representative sample
of students with disabilities."
Developing 'Workarounds'
Accommodations is just one of
many issues states conducting field
tests are grappling with, said Dan
Wiener, the administrator of inclusive
assessment at the Massachusetts
Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education, and the
chairman of PARCC's accessibility
and accommodations working group.
He is directing schools to note a student's
accommodation needs, and
if there isn't one available, "we will
figure out a workaround."
Trinell Bowman, the PARCC "state
lead" for accessibility and accommodations,
said the group would be
providing more information within
the next four to six weeks.
In addition to built-in technology,
the two consortia are developing a
certification process for students
who use assistive technology to access
academic material. Even the
built-in accommodations may not
meet those students' needs. Consortium
representatives have said they
are balancing access with a need to
maintain test security.
The U.S. Department of Education
has said that states must offer their
current tests to students with disabilities
instead of the common-core field
tests if those students use accommodations
or technology not yet compatible
with the new assessments.
The built-in accommodation technology
of both PARCC and Smarter
Balanced expands test access beyond
what is now available for students
in some states. For example,
accessibility features such as repeating
instructions and magnifying
text are among the supports available
to any student, even those who
are not formally identified as students
in special education. Both of
those accommodations will be ready
for field-testing by both consortia in
the spring.
Expanded Access
Other accessibility features that
will be ready for the field tests include
pop-up glossaries, which have
been of particularly interest to advocates
for English-language learners,
and built-in calculators.
PARCC tests operating on computers
using Windows and Apple operating
systems will also be able to handle
the text-to-speech accommodation
built into the tests during field testing.
That accommodation has been
one of the more controversial parts of
the accessibility framework, because
it will allow text passages to be read
to students taking the English/lan-
STILL IN THE
WORKS
The computerbased
tests
created by the
Partnership for Assessment
of Readiness for College
and Careers will have built-in
accessibility features. But
a number of them will be
unavailable when the tests
are field-tested in spring
2014. They include:
* Notepad
* Compass
* Graphic organizer tool
* Pencil tool
* Highlight tool
* American Sign Language video of
human interpreter
* Closed captioning
* Descriptive video
* General masking
* Refreshable Braille displays
* Word prediction
SOURCE: Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers
guage arts portion of the test.
Students using the read-aloud
accommodation on PARCC's tests
will have notations on their score
reports indicating that no claims
can be made about their ability to
demonstrate foundational print
skills such as decoding and fluency.
The read-aloud accommodation
is currently prohibited for students
in grades 3-5 using Smarter Balanced
tests.
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