Extended time testing accommodations for students with disabilities: Answers to five fundamental questions

Lovett, Benjamin J. (2010). Extended time testing accommodations for students with disabilities: Answers to five fundamental questions. Review of Educational Research, 80(4), 611-638.


This readable review thoroughly addresses the issues surrounding the increasingly common practice of allowing individuals who can document a disability (usually a learning disability or ADHD) to have additional time to complete a test. The review is organized around five questions that Phillips (1994) suggested be asked whenever such accommodation decisions are made (a reference to the Phillips work is provided in the reference list for those who want to explore further). Using these five clear, pointed questions provides a structure and coherence that makes this review especially easy to follow, and it in effect serves as a primer on the topic of providing appropriate test accommodations for individuals with disabilities. I learned a good deal from reading Lovett’s review, and found that it made me think about assumptions I had heretofore accepted without much examination. The issues discussed here run the gamut from the statistical (e.g., various reliability and validity issues) to the practical (e.g., the stunning statement that many decisions about whether to grant extended time are made in far from systematic ways in many cases). I have to admit that I do not know what exactly are the procedures and policies on test accommodations in the postsecondary institution in which I teach, even though I have at times been involved in implementing such accommodations for students. After reading this review, I want to know more, and I plan to ask some questions.

The author begins by laying out the problem and discussing some of the trends and recent laws that have made testing accommodations more commonly requested than before. He then explains the five focusing questions, which relate to 1) the comparability of construct validity between the two test conditions (i.e., do the scores tell us the same thing under both conditions?), 2) whether disabled individuals really benefit more from extended time than nondisabled individuals do (if not, then the accommodation is inappropriate and/or unfair), 3) whether disabled individuals can receive interventions that will help them adapt to the timed testing environment (an issue not heavily addressed in the literature but the most hopeful area of discussion here), 4) the reliability and accuracy of the disability diagnoses used as documentation to support accommodations (the inconsistency Lovett claims exists is unacceptable to me as an educator, especially when high-stakes decisions are based upon widely varying criteria, depending on who is doing the diagnosing), and 5) the general lack of systematic procedures for deciding who gets accommodations and who does not (another state of affairs which I find unacceptable).All in all, Lovett’s review is an eye-opener, even disturbing at times. Inconsistencies and lack of systematic procedures in diagnosis and decision-making are serious enough, but when Lovett indicated that whether or not a student could qualify for accommodations might differ based upon where he or she resides, I had to stop and let that register for a bit, and I have to wonder if once again our nation’s history of deficit thinking, racism and ethnocentrism, which is heavily tied up within our system of identifying and delivering interventions for those we label as “disabled”, is once again at work here.