Performance of Students With Disabilities Under Regular and Oral Administrations of a High-Stakes Reading Examination

Abstract

This study examined the effect of oral administration accommodations on test structure and student performance on the Reading test of the South Carolina High School Exit Examination (HSEE). The examination was given at Grade 10 and was untimed; hence, students were permitted as much time as they needed to answer all the questions. Three groups of students were studied. The 1st group consisted of students with disabilities (SWD) who were given the test under oral administration. Students in the 2nd group were SWD who were given the regular forms without oral accommodations. The last group comprised students without disabilities who took the regular forms, also without accommodations. It was found that the internal (factorial) structure of the HSEE test remained stable across these students groups. In addition, it was found that, after controlling for major background variables, HSEE performance of SWD under oral administration accommodations was equal to that of SWD (presumably with milder disabilities) under regular administration. It was concluded that oral administration accommodation served to level the playing field for students whose disabilities were presumably severe enough to require oral accommodations.

Accommodating Students With Disabilities in Large-Scale Testing

“…In general, these researchers found that accommodated test administrations for students with sensory/physical disabilities tended to show limited DIF. Recently, several research teams have been using this approach to examine the validity of accommodations for students with mental disabilities, some using factor analysis to examine measurement comparability (Huynh & Barton, 2006;Pomplun & Omar, 2000), others using analysis of DIF (Bolt & Ysseldyke, 2006;Lewis, Green, & Miller, 1999), with results varying in terms of the extent to which measurement comparability has been identified.…”

Accommodations and Item-Level Analyses Using Mixture Differential Item Functioning Models

“…Other studies point to the relative comparable performance between students with and without learning disabilities (no differential boost) on a state test where an oral administration did not alter the internal factor structure of the test (Chui & Pearson, 1999;Huynh & Barton, 2006). This would imply that the forms were comparable and valid comparisons and score interpretations could be made.…”

Psychometric Challenges in Assessing English Language Learners and Students With Disabilities

“…With larger sample sizes, Huynh and Barton (2006) reported coefficient alphas of .875, .892, and .895 for SWDs who received an oral accommodation on a state Grade 10 reading test, SWDs who did not receive an accommodation, and SWoDs, respectively. Although the two SWD group means were lower than the mean for the SWoDs, the standard deviations were not as disparate as in the previously discussed studies (accommodated SWDs SD = 76.3, nonaccommodated SWDs SD = 89.3, and SWoDs SD = 89.6).…”