Please join NCEO, the ASES SCASS, and the EL SCASS for a pre-session at the National Conference on Student Assessment in Austin, Texas titled Text Readers for Everyone on All Tests – Getting a Handle on What This Means. This session will be held on June 27 from 3:30–6:30 p.m.

This pre-session will bring together states, assessment vendors, and other educational stakeholders to address the need to develop clarity on the implementation of text readers. Text readers may now be available to all students during testing. What is the evidence of the validity of results when used by different students? Can we develop policies and a common language for text readers and text to speech for all students to counteract the current situation where these terms mean different things to different people (e.g., recorded human voice, synthesized voice, text highlighted or not)? Should language translations be provided through text to speech options? What resources and training do educators, parents, and students need to support better decision making and implementation of text readers and text to speech?

This session will focus on three areas: research, policy issues, and implementation issues. The goals of this session are to: (1) identify research needs for text to speech, (2) begin to develop common terminology and definitions that more precisely describe the types of text to speech so that these descriptions can be used in RFPs, and (3) discuss implementation and policy challenges and ways to address them.

This pre-session is free and open to the public. Register for the pre-session at: http://nceotacenter.org/ncsa/