Adaptations + Accommodations = Academic Success

By Maria Mahaffey

Teachers who work with heterogeneous grouping almost always have students of various abilities and learning styles. Addressing this variety can be a challenge for teachers. Simply accepting that differentiated instruction is necessary is only the first step. Determining how to differentiate instruction and then actually implementing such instruction can be the pivotal point in teaching success. One of the important tools of differentiating instruction is determining whether to offer adaptations or accommodations; then deciding which to use.

Academic accommodations offer opportunities for the same curriculum to be taught but in a different way. How the student learns is changed but the content remains the same.

Academic adaptations change what the student learns, as in the curriculum is modified. As a result, this is also known as modifications.

A teacher must determine, for each student who may need an adaptation or accommodation, which is the appropriate tool. Often students who are in need of adaptations or accommodations are already on an Individual Education Program (IEP) or 504 plan because of a diagnosed learning difficulty. Their IEP, of which each of the student’s teachers should be made aware, will outline their adaptations or accommodations. Sometimes these students will work with a Special Needs/Education teacher within a mainstream classroom or through pull out enrichment. This is when the adapted curriculum is frequently used. However, due to budget restraints, curricular design, and state standards based education, mainstream classroom teachers do have to create adapted lessons for students who have already been identified as having special needs.

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Adaptations + Accommodations = Academic Success

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Graduating America: Meeting the Challenge of Low Graduation-Rate High Schools

Everyone Graduates Center and Jobs for the Future, July, 2009

In his first major address to Congress, President Barack Obama envisioned a country where dropping out “is no longer an option.” He linked improving high school graduation rates to restoring the nation’s economic and political standing in the world.

Since then, federal officials and educators have focused on transforming or replacing the 2,000 high schools that produce more than half of U.S. dropouts. No longer can these failing schools, which routinely graduate fewer than two-thirds of their students, “go it alone.” Substantially increasing the number of young people who earn a high school diploma and are ready for college will require effective partnerships among the federal government, states, communities, and school districts.

The timing could hardly be better. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is pumping billions of dollars into turning around low-performing schools and has laid important groundwork for different levels and branches of government to work together.

News & Views

Using student test scores to grade California teachers has pitfalls

By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee,
August 26, 2009

Three years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that created a new system to collect data on California teachers but forbade intermingling its numbers with students' test scores to evaluate teachers' performance.