Accurate for All: Universal Design for Learning and the Assessment of Students with Learning Disabilities

The primary goal of universal design in large-scale assessment is to ensure accurate measurement and educational accountability for all participating students. To accomplish this goal requires careful attention to two things: the constructs that are actually being measured (identifying what is construct relevant) and the full spectrum of students who are being assessed. Successful application of universal design principles will require that the right constructs are being assessed accurately across all students for whom the assessment is intended. That will require that the full spectrum of abilities and disabilities be considered from the earliest stages of item development, through test construction, validation, and final test administration. In reality, there are probably no assessments that are fully universally designed in this way - but there has been considerable progress. Early advocates of universal design in large-scale assessment, such as the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) at the University of Minnesota, have made great progress on making tests more accessible. In their approach, similar to the earliest stages in any innovation, the application of universal design principles has been largely applied to improving old practices rather than generating fundamentally new ones.

These early approaches are based primarily on the original seven universal design principles developed by Ronald L. Mace and his architectural colleagues (Johnstone, 2003; Thompson, Thurlow, Quenemoen, & Lehr, 2002). In combination, the seven elements provide a framework for examining tests and their level of accessibility. Many large-scale assessment programs now use these universal design elements to varying degrees, and students with disabilities are being more frequently included in the design and validation of assessment instruments. These are important steps.

The next stages require more fundamental changes. For example, the architectural principles, created for designing fixed and permanent physical structures, are an awkward fit for the dynamic and developmental processes that education requires. Among other limitations, these principles concentrate primarily on reducing physical and sensory barriers and very little on the cognitive, linguistic, executive, and affective barriers that are of prime importance to students with learning disabilities. Another, perhaps more important issue, is that the early approaches and principles focus primarily on how to make print-based assessments more accessible. Unfortunately, that approach fails to capture the transformative power of universal design.

The next stage...