Links Related to Exceptional Students

Academically Gifted Students and those Gifted in other Ways

• ODE Links Related to Alternative Assessments - According to the ODE Accommodations Manual, assessments accommodations are practices and procedures that provide equitable access during assessments for children with special needs. Accommodations are designed to support each child’s access to test content, interactions with content, and response to content. The purpose of accommodations is to reduce or eliminate the effects of a child’s disability, and in the case of a child who is also identified as an English Language Learner (ELL ), to eliminate barriers to the academic standards caused by language differences. Making an accommodation in testing generally means that some aspect of the testing condition has been altered so that a child with a disability can more fully show what he or she knows or can do. The accommodations do not reduce expectations for learning. Accommodations in assessment situations tend to fall into several types of changes-timing, scheduling, setting, presentation, response. As the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) summarizes in its online Accommodations Manual (Thompson, Morse, Sharpe, & Hall, 2005):
  • Presentation Accommodations-Allow students to access testing information in ways that do not require them to visually read standard print. These alternate modes of access are auditory, multi-sensory, tactile, and visual.
  • Response Accommodations-Allow students to complete assessments in different ways or to solve or organize problems using some type of assistive device or organizer.
  • Setting Accommodations-Change the location in which a test is given or the conditions of the assessment setting.
  • Timing and Scheduling Accommodations-Increase the allowable length of time to complete an assessment and perhaps change the way the time is organized.

    A GED Teacher Fights for Accommodation - One teacher's achievement example

Use these sources (and the examples table on page 301 in your textbook) to guide you as you develop that part of the test construction project wherein you describe a different assessment alternative for each of three students: one alternate form, one alternate administration, and one test modification. We are using the word "alternate" not "accommodation" in this teacher created test because you may choose to submit an alternate for students other than documented IEP or ELL students.Be sure to specify what it is about these students that leads you to create an alternative assessment for each.

For these alternatives, consider:

• "alternate form" to be a presentation alternative;
• "alternate administration" to be a scheduling, timing or setting alternative; and
• "test modification" to be a response alternative.

• Ohio Gifted Rule / Law - OH districts must comply with both the Law and the Rule
  

• Pennsylvania Gifted Education - PA Regulations and Guidelines

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