Testing Accommodations Under the Amended Americans With Disabilities Act

Abstract

The 2008 amendments to the Americans With Disabilities Act have now been followed by implementation guidelines from the Department of Justice. These guidelines take strong positions on how testing entities should review requests for testing accommodations from examinees with disabilities. In this article, themes from the guidelines are evaluated against the findings of recent empirical research, highlighting major discrepancies. In general, the Department of Justice places more trust in the accommodations expertise of K–12 schools, clinical professionals, and testing entities than is warranted by empirical research. This trust is likely to lead to excessive recommendation of testing accommodations, even when they threaten a test’s validity. Several implications of these findings for practice and policy are discussed.