American Sign Language as an Accommodation During Standards-Based Assessments

In many states, standards-based education reform includes high-stakes assessment of children. Due to increasing pressure from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to include all children in state and district standards and assessments, many states have developed testing accommodation policies for special populations. In this study, we report specific challenges to the inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing students in the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning and the accountability system. One of the unanswered questions is whether the use of American Sign Language as an accommodation impacts the validity of standards-based assessments. The data from this study suggest that sign language use as an accommodation presents political, practical, and psychometric challenges. In particular, sign language translation can result in the omission of pertinent information required to answer a test item correctly. The authors make practical suggestions for leaders and test administrators about implementing accommodations.