Psychometric issues in Testing Students With Disabilities

One of the basic tenets of educational and psychological testing-standardization-leads to the administration and scoring of measures under uniform conditions. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires that individuals with handicapping conditions be administered assessments in manners, that reasonably accommodate their disabilities without penalizing them. The meaning of scores resulting from nonstandard test administrations needs to be evaluated through validation studies; results of the limited number of such studies are reviewed from the perspective of criterion-related, content-related and construct-related validation, with reliability analyses presented as well. Fairness in the use .of assessments, differential item functioning and robustness of measures for those with disabilities are also considered. Finally, the novel notions of testing compensatory skills and testing comparably are presented.