Accommodations & Modifications

An accommodation is change in the way content is presented to students with disabilities without changing the content or providing students with an unfair advantage.  The purpose of an accommodation is to "level the playing field".  Accommodations on statewide/districtwide assessment should be designed to gain an accurate measure of the student's academic achievement and functional performance. 

A  modification/adaptations is a change in what is taught (content).     

IEP teams must...

• have conversations about whether or not a student requires accommodations,

• base decisions about accommodations and modifications on present levels of performance and individual student needs, 

• determine which accommodations are necessary for the student to access FAPE as opposed to selecting accommodations that "might be helpful", and 

• document the rare instances where accommodations are not needed.  This should be done by adding a statement to the text box on page 6 of the IEP clearly identifying that the team considered a variety of accommodations but they were determined not necessary.