NAEP aims to assess all students selected as a part of its sampling process, including students who are classified by their schools as students with disabilities (SD) and/or as English language learners (ELL). The decision to exclude any of these students is made by school personnel. School personnel are encouraged to use inclusion criteria provided by NAEP and may discuss their inclusion decisions with NAEP field staff. Some students may participate with testing accommodations. Accommodations were first made available in the long-term trend assessment in 2004. Some accommodations such as bilingual books and reading the test aloud to students were allowed for the mathematics assessment but not the reading assessment.
Exclusion rates were generally lower in more recent assessment years when accommodations were permitted than in assessment years prior to 2004 when accommodations were not permitted. Variations in exclusion and accommodation rates may be due to changes in identification, inclusion, and accommodation policies, and should be considered when comparing students’ performance over time.
The tables below show the percentage of students identified as SD and/or ELL, and provide the rate of students excluded and accommodated in two ways: as a percentage of all students in the NAEP sample, or as a percentage of students identified as SD and/or ELL. While SD and ELL students participated in both the original and revised assessments in 2004, note that all SD and/or ELL students who were assessed under the original assessment format were assessed without accommodations. Tables that provide percentages of SD students include those identified under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (Title 29 U.S.C. 794 Section 504), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of handicap in federally assisted programs and activities.