Tam, I. (2020). The effect of the read-aloud and extended time accommodations on NAEP fourth and eighth grade reading and mathematics for students with disabilities (Publication No. 28024248) [Doctoral dissertation, St. John’s University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2467622302

St. John's University (Queens, NY); ProQuest document ID: 2467622302

Extended time and oral delivery by test proctors ("read-aloud") were investigated; each of the accommodations was examined separately in an extant dataset in comparison with non-accommodated samples. Oral delivery of NAEP reading comprehension tests was limited in that reading passages were not included in the material read aloud to test-takers.

Extant datasets of the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), deemed nationally representative, incorporated matched samples of selected students with disabilities and students without disabilities in grade 4 and grade 8. Specific disabilities were not reported. Gender (male and female) differences were also investigated. The population of grade 4 students with disabilities comprised 52,126 participants; grade 8 students with disabilities numbered 44,720 participants.

National (U.S.) extant datasets of performance scores from the 2013 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in reading and mathematics at grade 4 and grade 8 levels were analyzed. The relevant NAEP Reading test assesses students' reading comprehension skills; the relevant NAEP Math tests assess skills in the areas of number properties and operations, measurement, geometry, data analysis/statistics/probability, and algebra. Because the dataset contained data from two content tests, there were 193,692 individual scores.

This set of analyses of a very large extant national dataset of math and reading scores from students with a range of disabilities yielded broad patterns regarding the correlational links to accommodation use, of extended time and oral delivery by test proctors ("read-aloud"), in group mean comparisons to students with disabilities not using each accommodation. As a group, grade 4 students with disabilities who used extended time performed significantly better on average in both math and reading than those who did not use the accommodation. Grade 8 students with disabilities did not score significantly differently on average whether using extended time or not. Students with disabilities in both grades 4 and 8 who used oral delivery scored significantly higher in math than those who did not. Students with disabilities in both grades 4 and 8 who used partial oral delivery—that is, oral delivery of test instructions and question items, but not of reading passages—scored significantly higher in reading than those who did not. Further, the relative benefit of using oral delivery was more pronounced for the mean math assessment scores at both grade levels, and was more pronounced for grade 4 students in both math and reading than for grade 8 students as a group. Limitations of the study were reported, and future research directions were suggested.