There is wide variation across states in their accommodations policies for Human Reader, Text to Speech, and Pre-recorded Audio. A new NCEO report on this topic is now available—2012 State Policies for Accommodations Used to Deliver Assessments Orally.

The results of the analyses in the report can inform states in the general assessment consortia—PARCC and Smarter Balanced—as they plan for the transition to their new assessments. Among other things, the report provides an easy way to develop a crosswalk of policies on these accommodations to the new consortia policies.

Key findings in the report included:

• Most states allowed directions to be read aloud by a Human Reader on reading/English language arts (ELA) (n=36) and math assessments (n=36); some states also had policies that allowed directions to be delivered orally by Text to Speech or Pre-recorded Audio.
• For reading/ELA assessments, many states’ policies only allowed the delivery of assessment items or passages orally in certain circumstances or with implications for scoring.
• Some state policies addressed who could deliver the accommodation and what test security measures needed to be in place.
• The policies of a few states indicated that Text to Speech was preferred over Human Reader due to test security issues and to help ensure standardized delivery.

The report (PDF) is available at www.nceo.info/OnlinePubs/Synthesis91/SynthesisReport91.pdf.