​NAEP Accommodations Increase Inclusiveness

The responses of students with disabilities (SD) and English learners (EL) on NAEP assessments represent those of hundreds of other similar students. Without them, information about how to best meet the educational needs of these students would be lost. NAEP incorporates inclusive policies and practices into every aspect of the assessment, including selection of students, participation in the assessment administration, and valid and effective accommodations. This is essential to ensuring an assessment that yields meaningful NAEP results for all students. By representing their peers across the nation on NAEP, students with disabilities and English learners help to ensure that NAEP results can be used to inform efforts to improve educational programs.

Just like any other student, SD and EL students are selected to participate in NAEP. Within each selected school and grade to be assessed, students are chosen at random to participate in NAEP. Regardless of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, status as an English learner, or any other factors, every student has the same chance of being selected, because NAEP is administered to a sample of students who represent the student population of the nation as a whole, and for state level tests, of each individual state.

The accommodations allowed on NAEP and those allowed in states are often similar, but there may be some differences. Sometimes these differences result from the way that the subject being measured is defined in the NAEP frameworks. For example, NAEP does not allow read-aloud of any part of the NAEP reading test except the instructions, because decoding words is part of what the NAEP framework is measuring.