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Handbook of Accessible Instruction and Testing Practices pp 107–118Cite as

Assessing Students with Autism: Considerations and Recommendations

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Abstract

Approximately 9% of students receiving special education services in the United States are identified with autism. Given the increasing prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD; see below) and the emphasis in the 2014 Standards (AERA, APA, NCME) for evaluating fairness, attending to universal design, and ensuring accessibility of tests for all groups, it is imperative test developers ensure standardized achievement tests yield results that are valid for these students. This chapter includes a discussion of the characteristics of ASD with a focus on strategies to reduce the effects of test anxiety for this population, followed by an overview of applied behavior analysis and the relevance of behaviorism to the treatment of ASD. Several behavioral strategies are presented, and their putative impacts on the assessment milieu are examined. Finally, the author proposes several guidelines for approaching test design and implementation for individuals with ASD to ensure the validity of inferences from their test results.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This behavioral definition of learning may be distinguished from that of Sweller’s (2010) cognitive load theory, in which learning can be defined as useful changes in long-term memory.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Accessible Hope, LLC, Nashville, TN, USA

    Peter A. Beddow

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  1. Peter A. Beddow
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Stephen N. Elliott

  2. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA

    Ryan J. Kettler

  3. Accessible Hope, LLC, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Peter A. Beddow

  4. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Alexander Kurz

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Beddow, P.A. (2018). Assessing Students with Autism: Considerations and Recommendations. In: Elliott, S., Kettler, R., Beddow, P., Kurz, A. (eds) Handbook of Accessible Instruction and Testing Practices. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71126-3_7

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