Huggins, A. C., & Elbaum, B. (2013). Test accommodations and equating invariance on a fifth-grade science exam . Educational Assessment , 18 (1), 49–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2013.761536

Journal Article
Huggins, A. C., & Elbaum, B. (2013). Test accommodations and equating invariance on a fifth-grade science exam. Educational Assessment, 18(1), 49–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2013.761536

Tags

Attention problem; Autism; Braille; Dictionary/glossary; Elementary; Emotional/Behavioral disability; Enlarged print (on paper); Extended time; Hearing impairment (including deafness); High school; Intellectual disabilities; K-12; Learning disabilities; Middle school; Multiple accommodations; Multiple disabilities; No disability; Physical disability; Science; Speech/Language disability; Technological aid; U.S. context; Visual impairment (including blindness)

URL

https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/heda20

Summary

Accommodation

Accommodations naturalistically provided in the state included additional time, assistive device (not including calculator), braille, large print, unspecified response accommodation, unspecified setting accommodation, and "visual presentation." Accommodations provided for English language learners (ELLs) are not reported for the study in this summary.

Participants

Item-level scores for the 191,906 students who completed the (U.S.) state science assessment in 2009 formed the extant data set analyzed. Students with disabilities totaled 27,988 for the 15 state disability categories. The examination of the results for the estimated 11,507 participants who were English language learners was minimized in this study summary.

Dependent Variable

Item-level scores for the 191,906 students who completed the state science assessment in 2009 formed the extant data set analyzed. Students with disabilities totaled 27,988 for the 15 state disability categories. The examination of the results for the estimated 11,507 participants who were English language learners was minimized in this study summary.

Findings

Students without disabilities scored highest, on average, as a group; the next-highest scores were those of the students with disabilities who did not receive accommodations, and the lowest-scoring group was the students with disabilities using accommodations. The researchers noted that this study used extant data and did not control assessment conditions, and mean ability differences appear to have confounded these findings. However, the purpose of the study was to apply "score equity assessment" in order to ascertain both comparability and equity of scores across population subgroups. Analyses indicate that students with disabilities (and English language learners) who used various assessment accommodations evidenced a slightly higher degree of measurement comparability to the general population of test-takers than did students with disabilities (and English language learners) not using accommodations. Limitations of the study were reported, and future research directions were suggested.