bution License Making Accommodations Work for Students in the Special Education Setting

With the pressure of No Child Left Behind and state-ordered accountability initiatives building, local educators ’ angst with the challenges of documenting improvement on the part of special education students, as a function of their performance on high stakes content assessments, con-tinues to grow. One major tool used to identify academic needs and provide support is the Indi-vidual Education Plan, a model bolstered through the selection of accommodations particular to the individual student. How are those accommodations identified? What proof might be provided that they have been implemented successfully? And where is the data that might suggest that they be continued on the student’s IEP? Using data to identify, monitor, and evaluate the use of accommodations for individual special education students is a must if educators are to verify that those students are making progress academically. However, the system which is implemented to achieve this must be least intrusive for those who will use it so that it doesn’t suffer from reduced implementation fidelity