The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of special accommodations on standardized achievement test scores of students in a school system in East Tennessee. Scores obtained by special education students who did not receive special accommodations in 1998 and/or 1999 were compared with scores obtained by the same students who did receive special accommodations in subsequent testing. Scores obtained by special education students who did receive special accommodations were compared with scores obtained by special education students who did not receive special accommodations.
The population consisted of 448 special education students in grades two through eight in a public school system in Upper East Tennessee. All students who received Special Education services and took the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) achievement test with or without special accommodations in 1998, 1999, 2000, and/or 2001. Ninety-nine percent of students who received special accommodations had the accommodations of read aloud internal test instructions and read aloud internal test items.
A quasi-experimental design was used. A t-test for independent means, a t-test for paired samples, and a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze data.
As evidenced in this study, special education students who received special accommodations did experience significant gain scores in science, social studies, and math in an initial year they received accommodations. There were significant gains in science and social studies in 2000 for students initially receiving special accommodations. There were significant gains in social studies and math in 2001 for students initially receiving special accommodations. While this study did not find that mean math scores increased statistically significantly in 2000, it is of practical importance to mention that mean math scores did increase substantially. It appears that the benefit of accommodations is not continuous. Students in this study who received special accommodations two consecutive years did not experience noteworthy gain in the second year. Some students, in fact, experienced a significant decrease in gain scores for the second year they received special accommodations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-1803 |
| Date | 04 May 2002 |
| Creators | Janson, Ilene Boyd |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright by the authors. |
Page generated in 0.3487 seconds