Accommodations and test administration
All easyCBM account holders are encouraged to provide the accommodations they normally would for instruction and classroom assessment, The use of manipulatives is also allowed with the easyCBM program. In general, we allow any accommodations or modifications the students would normally be provided. One way to think about it is that if the construct (thing being tested) is not specifically 'the ability to read and understand written English', then a read aloud and read in another language option should be allowed.
Students with learning disabilities, including those who use routine IEP accommodations like calculators for math, are included in the national norming sample and results. Thus, comparing grade-level results for these students to the norms is appropriate.
In cases where the print may appear to small, a measure could be enlarged and printed off for a student to take manually. In the case of online testing a web browser should have a "View" tab, in the menu bar, with an option to zoom in as many times as needed to enlarge the print.
With the test visible on the computer screen, go to the View tab of the menu bar and click on it. A drop-down menu should give you an option to scroll down and choose either zoom in or zoom out. You can repeat the process of zooming in several times until the image is large enough to read.
For blind and seeing impaired students, you are welcome to render the measures in Braille,
Math
Our math items include a read-aloud option for grades K-8 but it does not provide verbal descriptions of any pictures or graphs that might be included in the items. Teachers may read the question and answer choices, word for word, with no definition, explanation or emphasis of any words or answer choices as demonstrated by voice inflections and/or intonation. You also cannot explain how to figure out any of the math problems. We do not recommend the use of a calculator unless a student's IEP stipulates it as an accommodation. The use of scratch paper is allowed and is not considered an accommodation.
Reading
None of the reading measures include a read aloud option. We recommend not reading words or helping students.unless their IEP stipulates it as an accommodation. If there is a word on the test that a student doesn't know how to read, they can ask for it to be read to them but you cannot tell them what anything means. Doing so may invalidate the test score. The one exception would be if you read to a student in Spanish or another foreign language.
If the student has read aloud as an allowable accommodation, then the teacher can read the comprehension and vocabulary tests aloud.
Reading Comprehension
When answering the comprehension questions, students have the opportunity to refer to the passage. This passage stays on each page, and in view, as the questions progress from page to page of the test.
Fluency-based tests
For letter names, letter sounds, word reading fluency, and passage reading fluency tests, no read aloud is possible.
Vocabulary
Read aloud supports for the vocabulary measures would be allowed ONLY if they are part of a student’s IEP, otherwise, it would be considered changing the construct (ability to make sense of words when they are used in context). The norms were all computed based on students doing their own reading. That said, if a student’s IEP specifies a read-aloud accommodation, then this would definitely be allowed.
Note: For students with speech impairments, we recommend that you score as "correct" the items that the student pronounces with their consistent way of saying things. For instance, a student whose speech impairment causes him to say "tow" instead of "cow" (and "touch" instead of "couch"), these items would be counted as CORRECT because the student is demonstrating knowledge of the letter/ sound correspondence through the consistent production of the sound matched to that letter / letter combinations. This same scoring approach also applies to word and passage reading fluency measures. Speech impairments may require the assessor to apply slightly different "correct/incorrect" rules as they are scoring the student's assessment.