History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
New industry standard promises accessibility for assessments
- 12-17-2010
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Blog by Catherine Gewertz/Education Week
A new development in the assessment world could make tests more accessible to students with disabilities, and more portable, experts in the field said earlier this week. One of the experts that worked on the project likened it to the development of HTML coding, which created a common language for the Web. The news is that a new, voluntary industry standard has been created for test-writing for all types of students. If widely adopted, it would essentially mean that tests would be written with a shared set of codes, or "tags," that create a common language describing their content. This would allow states, for instance, to switch test vendors without having to undertake a laborious translation process from one test-maker's digital "language" to another's. The new standard also would mean that assessments could be designed with adaptations for various learning disabilities up front, rather than having to make accommodations at the test site and risk changing the test or test items in ways that could undermine their validity. (more…)
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