High School Biology and Chemistry Items

The result of this project, completed in 2012, was a set of end-of-course assessment items and item series for high school biology and chemistry designed to increase access for English Learners and students with learning disabilities in reading.

Built on earlier research into accessible assessment items for students with low English proficiency and learning disabilities, this project extended the approach beyond individual test questions and applied the methodology to more complex high school science content.

Lessons learned from this project informed our subsequent research on accessible classroom assessment tasks for all students and were particularly useful in developing items targeting more cognitively complex content and skills.

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This project was carried out in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Education and funded by the US Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) Enhanced Assessment Grant (PR #S368A090029).