State Assessment Accommodations

For state assessment accommodations resources and forms used by districts, refer to the CDE Assessment Accommodations Training webpage.

Information relating to the use of accommodations during instruction is found on the CDE Office of Special Education webpage.

2020 Colorado Academic Standards and Colorado Measures of Academic Success: Students to Read and Comprehend Independently and Proficiently

The 2020 Reading Colorado Academic Standards (CAS) expect students to read (decode a printed or tactile code) and comprehend (make meaning of) literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.  In accordance with the full implementation of the 2020 Reading, Writing and Communicating CAS in the 2020-2021 school year, Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) will mirror the standards’ expectation that students combine their phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and text comprehension reading skills to demonstrate mastery of the 2020 CAS independent reading expectations. Assessment administration adjustments that change this expectation, such as reading the text from the CMAS English language arts assessment to the student, should not be used and will result in an invalid administration starting in spring 2022. Students may continue to use accommodations that do not change this expectation. 

Accommodations generally refer to adjustments to standardized testing materials or procedures which allow students to demonstrate their learning without changing what the assessment intends to measure. Accommodations maintain the expectations and rigor of the content of the assessment. Scores resulting from accommodated administrations are considered valid and may be interpreted the same way as results from non-accommodated assessments. Adjustments to the administration of an assessment that change what the assessment measures are considered modifications rather than accommodations because they fundamentally change the assessment’s intended measure and therefore do not result in valid scores. Modifications produce scores that cannot be interpreted through the same lens, compared or aggregated together. Because the CMAS English language arts assessment measures the reading and writing components of the CAS, providing auditory presentation of printed text changes the assessment’s focus from reading and comprehension of text to listening and comprehension of text, which falls under different, unassessed listening standards.