Tests are often a stressful time for students and can feel quite overwhelming when one considers it as a culminating summary to everything you have learned in one unit. A Student may perform well on assignments and quizzes so relying on a test at the end of the term to determine the overall mark may not represent an accurate picture of what the student truly knows and understands. A student who struggles with reading or writing may require a scribe to dictate the information to orally. Allowing the student to write their tests or exams in a quiet environment that is not overly stimulating, taking the extra time needed and ensuring all students understand the rules explained at the beginning.
The overall impacts of assessment accommodation have remained unknown.
Several federally-funded research efforts are currently underway to investigate the impact of accommodations on test validity and reliability. Until we know more about the impact of assessment accommodations on test results, students with disabilities should be provided needed accommodations. The only alternative to this is to exclude students who need accommodations. In doing so, school districts and states are left with no data on these students. It is better to include and accommodate and look for ways to report test scores than to exclude students (NCEO, Policy Directions 8, Reporting Educational Results for Students with Disabilities).
Types of assessing such as Criterion-Referenced Testing could appear beneficial to those students who require accomodations as this method of testing looks specifically at a set criteria and examines if the student knows and understands the set goals or point of focus.
http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/measeval/crnmref.html
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