5.1 Assessing Students with Disabilities and English Learners

5.1 Assessing Students with Disabilities and English Learners

PECT lens: Objective 0002.6 (Module 1, Subarea I) asks for legally acceptable modifications and accommodations when assessing students with disabilities, and for strategies that use Pennsylvania's Language Proficiency Standards for English Language Learners PreK–12 (ELPS) to design content assessments for English learners. Current Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) language names the Pennsylvania English Language Development Standards (PA ELDS) Framework as required for instruction and assessment by all teachers of English learners, and highly recommends the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition (including Can-Do Descriptors, Performance Definitions, and rubrics) alongside it. On the exam, the stem may still say ELPS. Treat ELPS, PA ELDS, and WIDA as the same job: plan the language of a content task so the child can show the content.

This section is about assessment access, not about writing an Individualized Education Program (IEP) from scratch. Chapter 7 covers universal design, IEP-team roles, and implementing the IEP. Here you decide whether a testing change is fair measurement or a quiet rewrite of the standard.

Accommodation versus modification: the construct test

Start every 0002.6 item with one question: What skill or knowledge is this assessment trying to measure? That target is the construct. A change that removes a barrier unrelated to the construct is an accommodation. A change that makes the task a different, easier, or narrower skill is a modification.

Classroom look: A kindergarten child with an orthopedic impairment builds a three-part story with pictures. If the teacher wants narrative sequence, letting the child dictate to an adult or device is an accommodation. If the teacher instead accepts a single-picture label and records “meets the sequencing standard,” that is a modification dressed up as kindness.

Exam trap: “Fair” does not mean identical procedures for every child. Fair means valid access to the same construct. Identical paper-and-pencil conditions can be biased against a child who cannot hold a pencil or who is still acquiring English.

Students with disabilities: legally acceptable assessment supports

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and 22 Pa. Code Chapter 14, a student with an IEP must have a documented plan for how the child participates in classroom, district, and state assessments, including accommodations. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act covers students with disabilities who need access supports but may not have an IEP. You do not need to recite IEP-meeting scripts on 0002.6. You do need this operational rule:

Use in instruction first. An accommodation that appears for the first time on a high-stakes day is a poor practice and often an invalid one. If a Grade 3 student will use extra time, a scribe, or text-to-speech on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), those supports should already be routine on classroom probes that measure the same kind of work. PDE publishes allowable accommodations for PSSA and Keystone Exams annually; WIDA publishes allowable supports for ACCESS for ELLs. Do not invent a private list that contradicts the current published guide. Do apply the construct test to classroom assessments every week.

Four classic accommodation categories still organize PreK–4 practice:

Read-aloud is not automatically legal or illegal. If the construct is mathematical reasoning, reading the word problem aloud typically removes a decoding barrier. If the construct is reading — decoding, fluency, or unassisted comprehension of print — reading the entire passage aloud usually changes the construct. That is why “just read everything to everyone with an IEP” is a common wrong answer.

Scribe works the same way. A scribe who records the child's words on a Grade 2 opinion task preserves composition ideas when motor output is the barrier. A scribe who rephrases, prompts the “right” details, or spells and punctuates beyond the child's intent has stopped being an accommodation and started taking the test.

Alternate statewide assessment (in Pennsylvania, the PASA for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities) is a participation decision, not a classroom extra-time box. Do not treat “give the alternate test” as a routine accommodation for a child who is working toward grade-level standards with supports. That decision lives with the IEP team (Chapter 7). On 0002.6, prefer the option that documents and uses allowable access supports on the general assessment unless the stem clearly describes significant cognitive disabilities and alternate achievement standards.

English learners: content tests are not language-proficiency tests

22 Pa. Code § 4.26 requires a program so that students whose dominant language is not English can reach English proficiency and Pennsylvania academic standards. PDE's Educating English Learners Basic Education Circular is explicit: the program includes English language development and adaptations in content instruction and assessments based on proficiency levels and the PA ELDS Framework plus academic standards.

Keep two assessments mentally separate:

• ACCESS for ELLs (annual state English language proficiency assessment) measures listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English. Federal law requires it. PDE states there is no parent opt-out of annual ELP testing. Scores belong in the student's record. ACCESS tells you language, not whether the child understands life cycles or place value.
• Content assessments (classroom math, science investigations, social studies tasks, and, in Grades 3–4, PSSA academic tests) should measure those content standards. English learners do participate in state academic assessments according to published guidelines, with EL-allowable accommodations that PDE updates annually.

Exam trap: “Wait to assess science until ACCESS is proficient” starves the child of content evidence and violates the idea of equitable access to grade-level content. “Give ACCESS instead of the math probe” confuses language proficiency with mathematics.

Using ELPS / PA ELDS to design content assessments

PECT still prints ELPS. In a Pennsylvania classroom in 2026 you open the PA ELDS Framework and, as PDE highly recommends, WIDA 2020 tools. The design move is the same.

The language standards overlay academic content. In both the historic ELPS classroom framework and WIDA ELD standards, teachers plan language for:

1. Social and instructional purposes (classroom routines, asking for help)
2. Language arts
3. Mathematics
4. Science
5. Social studies

You then match what the child can do with language now to how the child will show the content. WIDA proficiency level language that teachers actually use includes Entering through Bridging (with Reaching as a later independent level in WIDA's scale). You do not need an unpublished cut score. You need a task that a child at an early level can complete with pointing, matching, drawing, or short oral labels, while a child at a later level can produce connected academic language — without changing the science or math target.

Design steps for a content assessment:

1. Name the content standard (for example, a Grade 1 math story problem on addition, or a PreK science observation of ice melting).
2. Name the language function the task currently demands (explain, recount, argue, describe).
3. Check the child's proficiency and Can-Do type of performance (point to a picture; use a sentence frame; produce a paragraph).
4. Add linguistic supports that keep the construct: labeled diagrams, word banks for non-target vocabulary, sentence frames, oral response, extra time, a bilingual word-to-word glossary when it does not define the content term being tested, native-language directions.
5. Refuse supports that do the content: simplifying 12 − 5 into “count to three,” or replacing a grade-level informational text with a caption that no longer measures the same comprehension standard.

Native-language support is often an accommodation when it removes a language barrier from a content construct: directions in the home language, a human interpreter for oral math directions, or allowing the child to draft ideas in the home language before showing mathematics. It becomes a modification if you change the academic target itself (“this child only needs counting, not the Grade 2 standard”) because the child is an English learner.

PDE grading rules that show up as fairness items: in content courses, English learners use the same grading system as peers (pass/fail only for ELs is inappropriate if others receive letter grades). An English learner may not be retained solely for lack of English proficiency. Those rules assume you documented language-aligned instruction and assessment over time — which is exactly what 0002.6 is testing.

Dual-identified learners and PreK–4 snapshots

English language development and special education are not mutually exclusive. A child can have an IEP or 504 plan and be an English learner. Assessment then stacks disability accommodations and language supports. Lack of English proficiency must not be the determinant factor in identifying a disability; conversely, a disability label does not cancel ELD or ELPS/ELDS-aligned content assessment.

PreK: A four-year-old dual language learner sorts living/nonliving with real objects. The teacher accepts pointing, home-language labels, and a peer model, then records the science evidence. Demanding a full English sentence before counting the sort would measure language, not science.

Kindergarten: A child with a fine-motor IEP goal completes a letter-sound probe by selecting letters or using a keyboard rather than forming each grapheme with a pencil, because this probe's construct is letter-sound knowledge, not handwriting. Handwriting gets its own, separate evidence.

Grade 2: An English learner solves two-step word problems with a read-aloud of the items, a math-language word bank (altogether, left, compare), and extra time. The numbers and operations stay grade-level. Replacing the items with single-digit matching would modify the math.

Grade 3–4: PSSA season. Extra time, a separate setting, and EL-allowable supports from the current PDE guide are on the table. Reading the entire ELA reading test aloud because “reading is hard in a second language” is not automatically an accommodation if the construct is reading in English. Pair classroom evidence (scaffolded content tasks) with the state rules; do not freelance.

Exam traps for 0002.6

• Identical conditions = fairness. No. Access that preserves the construct is fairness.
• Any help is an accommodation. Help that changes the standard is a modification.
• ELPS is only the ESL teacher's document. PDE: all teachers of ELs use PA ELDS for planning assessment.
• No content grades until English is proficient. Content must be assessed with language supports.
• Scribe or extra time “gives the answer.” Used correctly, they remove a barrier; used as coaching, they contaminate the score.
• IEP meeting as the only next step. 0002.6 wants the assessment change itself. Team process is Chapter 7.

When you plan, write: “I am measuring ___. This support changes ___ (how / the target).” If you cannot finish that sentence, you are not ready to defend the score.