ABSTRACT
In this study, we investigated the impact of a student-reads-aloud accommodation on the performance of middle school and high school students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on a test of reading comprehension. Data for the analyses came from 311 students (n = 230 with LD) who took alternate forms of a reading test in a standard and an accommodated condition. In the accommodated condition, students were instructed to read each passage aloud at their own pace and then to read each comprehension question and the response choices aloud before marking their answer. As a group, students' test performance did not differ in the 2 conditions, and students with LD did not benefit more from the accommodation than students without LD. However, students with LD showed greater variability in their response to the accommodation such that they were almost twice as likely as students without LD to show a substantive change in test performance in either the positive or negative direction. The findings of the study underscore the need to go beyond the interpretation of group mean differences in determining the validity of testing accommodations.
