Improving Meaningful Use of Accommodations by Multilingual Learners

For more than two decades, accommodations have served as the primary strategy for ensuring the valid participation of multilingual learners ( MLLs) in high-stakes summative assessments. Using historical analyses of the evolution of testing accommodation guidelines and related instructional practices, the authors explain how the application of accessibility principles to test development and testing guidelines has reframed accommodations into three categories: accommodations, accessibility features, and administration considerations. The authors then discuss what educators can do to more effectively prepare MLLs by integrating these supports into instruction that targets strategic reading and engagement with text and illustrate how the transfer of paper-oriented reading strategies to digital texts requires explicit attention to foster effective use of embedded accommodations and accessibility features. The authors also provide sample professional development activities to build educator awareness about ideas for integrating MLL test preparations around accommodations into close reading instruction of digital texts.