Elliott, J., Bielinski, J., Thurlow, M., DeVito, P., & Hedlund, E. (1999). Accommodations and the performance of all students on Rhode Island’s performance assessment (Rhode Island Assessment Report 1). University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes. https://ici.umn.edu/products/862

Also downloadable from ERIC online database: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED440516

A variety of accommodations and combinations of accommodations were provided to students. These included extended-time, oral presentation (read-aloud), repeated directions, separate setting (resource room or small group), oral response, more frequent breaks, and combinations of these accommodations. Accommodations were available to all students (both students with and without disabilities).

Approximately 11,000 students in grade 4,  with and without disabilities, from throughout Rhode Island participated.

Scores on three Rhode Island performance assessments (math, writing, and health) were the dependent variables (state assessment extant dataset).

Students receiving special education services scored lower, regardless of the number of accommodations used, than students not in special education who used no accommodations. While there were differences in findings within content areas, the overall findings were that accommodations did not inflate test scores. The extended-time accommodation did show performance levels that were higher than those in other accommodated conditions. In some cases, the factor structure of the tests appeared to be different with different accommodations.