Appendix B-2: Guidelines for Choosing Text-to-Speech or Read Aloud

DeSSA ELA Summative and Interim Assessment Reading Passages

for Students with Disabilities in Grades 3-5

The decision to provide a student in grades 3-5 with text-to-speech or human read-aloud accommodations for the

English language arts (ELA) reading assessment passages is a significant decision, one that has possible long-term

implications for the child. These accommodations are defined as follows:

Text-to-speech:

Text is read aloud to the student via embedded text-to-speech technology. The student is able to control the speed as

well as raise or lower the volume of the voice via a volume control.

Read aloud:

Text is read aloud to the student by a trained and qualified human reader who follows the administration guidelines

provided in the DeSSA Test Administration Manual and Read Aloud Protocol in the Manual’s appendix. Readers may read

aloud some or all of the content to students.

The decision about providing either of these accommodations should be guided by a set of questions to determine

whether it is appropriate to provide the DeSSA ELA reading passages via the embedded text-to-speech accommodation

or the non-embedded human reader accommodation.

Background

Students can read closely and analytically to comprehend a range of increasingly complex literary and informational

texts.

For students in grades 3-5, the DeSSA ELA/Literacy claim integrates the ability to read and the ability to understand what

was read. Providing ELA reading passages via text-to-speech or a human reader to students who do not meet specific

criteria means that these combined skills are not being assessed, and no conclusions can be reached about the student’s

skills in these areas.

1. The claims are identified in the content specifications for the Smarter Balanced ELA/Literacy assessment. The

content specifications document is available at

http://www.smarterbalanced.org/smarter-balanced-assessments/, under Content Specifications.

2. The DeSSA ELA assessment allows text-to-speech and read aloud for directions and ELA items as designated

supports available to all students with documented needs. It also now allows text-to-speech and read aloud for

ELA reading passages for those students with IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) that document the need

for these accommodations for ELA reading passages.

There is minimal research on the numbers of students with disabilities in grades 3-5 who might need text-to-

speech or read aloud assistance because of a disability that interferes with their ability to learn to decode and

comprehend text. Some states have suggested that from 1% to 1.5% of their total student population may have

a disability that severely limits or prevents them from decoding written text, while others indicate that the

numbers are much smaller or much larger. These students may be those who are blind or have significant visual

impairments but have not learned to read braille, and those students who have disabilities that have significant

decoding or fluency challenges.

3. Because grades 3-5 are a critical time for students to learn to read and grow in their comprehension skills, it is

important to obtain a good measure of these skills. Providing the text-to-speech and read aloud

accommodations to students who do not need them because of their identified reading disability can have

negative consequences for instruction and for their growing decoding and comprehension skills. For example,

some educators might assume that students who receive the text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation no

longer need to be instructed on decoding and fluency skills, which is a clearly inappropriate assumption.

Only those students for whom it is appropriate to provide the DeSSA ELA reading assessment passages through

text-to-speech or read aloud accommodations should receive them. Further, for those students receiving the

read aloud accommodation, it is critical that the reader adhere to the DeSSA Read Aloud Guidelines. The

guidelines are available at: http://www.smarterbalanced.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Read-

Aloud- Guidelines.pdf.

The questions provided here are ones that can assist Individualized Education Program (IEP) decision-making

teams in determining whether it is appropriate to indicate that students in grades 3-5 should be provided the

reading passages for an ELA reading assessment via a text-to-speech or human read aloud accommodation. The

questions should be answered by the student’s teachers, and by the student himself or herself. Then, the IEP

team can consider both the provided answers, along with other diagnostic information to make a decision about

the provision of text-to-speech or read aloud accommodations for the DeSSA ELA assessment. A tool for

documenting the responses to questions is provided in Table 1.

Questions for Teachers

1. Is this student blind or does this student have a significant visual impairment? If so, is the student learning to read

braille?

3 Your state should be keeping track of the number of students receiving the text-to-speech or read aloud

accommodation for ELA reading passages. It will provide additional professional development and guidance if it appears

that too many or too few students may be using the accommodation for the DeSSA ELA reading assessment passages.

Text-to-Speech and Read Aloud Decision Guidelines Page 3

A student who is learning to read braille should be assessed in grades 3-5 with the braille form of the assessment, so

that an accurate measure of his or her reading and comprehension skills is obtained. If the student has not learned to

read braille, providing the DeSSA ELA reading assessment passages through text to speech or read aloud is appropriate.

2. Does the student have a reading-based disability? Does the disability affect the student’s decoding skills, fluency

skills, or comprehension skills?

A reading-based disability may affect a student’s ability to decode, read with fluency, understand text that is decoded, or

a combination of these. Determining the nature of the student’s reading challenges can help determine the appropriate

intervention approaches, as well as needed accommodations during classroom instruction and during assessments.

Having a reading-based disability means that there is strong evidence of the persistence of the disability despite

intensive, targeted instruction. There should be documentation of the interventions used and formative assessment

data on the effect of each intervention. Evidence of a reading-based disability should have been documented in grades

K-2, and reflected in such difficulties as difficulty learning letters or letter sounds, difficulty in learning sight words, and

difficulty in phoneme blending. These and other data (for example, student work) should be reviewed by the IEP team to

consider the access effects of the use of the accommodation. The text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation is meant

to provide access to the text, not to make up for being a slow reader. Being a slow reader does not mean that the

student should receive the text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation for the DeSSA ELA reading assessment in

grades 3-5.

3. Is the student an English language learner (EL)?

An English language learner is a student who is learning how to read at the same time that he or she is learning English.

It is important to obtain an accurate measure of his or her decoding and skills in English as the student learns the

language, which may take several years. Thus, being an EL is not a sole reason to receive text-to-speech or a read aloud

accommodation for the DeSSA ELA reading passages. If the EL also has a reading-based disability (as defined in Question

2) or is blind, then the considerations for those disabilities would apply. Only students with an IEP or 504

accommodation plan are eligible to receive the text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation.

4. Does the student have other needs that might be accommodated by the provision of the text-to-speech or read

aloud accommodation?

In the past, some educators attempted to monitor the pace at which a student went through an assessment by

providing the read aloud accommodation. Pacing involved adjusting how fast the administrator read an item, the

punctuation used as he or she read, and how much time was provided between each item to allow the student to

respond. This is not an appropriate reason to provide the text to speech or read aloud accommodation because it masks

what the assessment is assessing.

Sometimes a student who is not blind or does not have a significant visual impairment, or does not have a reading-based

disability, has a disability that may have produced a situation where the child ended up lagging in his or her reading

skills. This should be addressed through instruction rather than the assessment. It is important that students with other

learning needs not be provided the text-to-speech or read aloud accommodations for the ELA reading passages.

IEP teams should recognize that beginning readers struggle for a variety of reasons. Thus, the team must use student

data on the effect of the accommodation during instruction to decide whether the child’s struggles are due to the

disability. By only offering the text-to-speech and read aloud accommodations to those students with true reading-

based disabilities or blindness (for those who have not learned braille) and not providing to students with other learning

needs, the system has documentation of the need to address the student’s missing skills.

5. Have interventions been used to improve the student’s decoding, fluency, or comprehension skills? If so, what

approaches have been used to strengthen the student’s decoding, fluency, or comprehension skills?

Documentation of the approaches that have been taken to strengthen the student’s decoding, fluency, or

comprehension skills is an important step in determining whether a text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation is

needed. This documentation should include specific dates with progress monitoring data and interventions

implemented. It should demonstrate that continuous, intensive interventions have not been successful in improving

student decoding, fluency, or comprehension performance. Only if this can be demonstrated should the text-to-speech

or read aloud accommodation be considered for the student.

6. Does the student use text-to-speech or receive a read aloud accommodation during instruction?

Students with significant disability-related barriers to accessing text usually have demonstrated these barriers over an

extended period of time. As a result, for instructional purposes, they have used the text-to-speech or read aloud

accommodation during instruction to gain access to text. They also may have membership in an organization such as

Bookshare, or regularly use assistive technology software to provide them access to text. If the student has not been

provided these types of accommodations during instruction, they should not be provided during the assessment.

7. Does the student use text-to-speech or receive a read aloud accommodation during formative assessments or

during other DeSSA summative assessments?

Another indicator of the need for text-to-speech or read aloud for the DeSSA ELA reading passages is that the student

regularly receives the accommodation during formative assessments or other DeSSA summative assessments. If a

student receives text-to-speech or read aloud for instruction but not for formative assessments or for other DeSSA

summative assessments, it is likely that the student does not need text-to-speech or read aloud for the DeSSA ELA

reading passages.

8. Does someone (e.g., teacher, paraprofessional, another student, parent) regularly read aloud to the student in

school?

A possible supporting indicator of the need for text-to-speech or the read aloud accommodation is that the student

typically is read to instead of the student reading for himself or herself. This indicator should be used with caution. It

should not just be because students with disabilities are typically provided text-to-speech or a read aloud

accommodation. Instead, the fact that someone else reads aloud to the student, rather than the student reading for

himself or herself, is because it has been determined that the student will lack access to important information due to

significant barriers to decoding, fluency, or comprehension. Even when this is the case, it does not necessarily mean that

the student should receive the text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation for grade 3-5 ELA reading passages. There

is a risk that some students who are regularly read aloud to in school may not have had appropriate access to high-

quality reading instruction; this needs to be ruled out when using read aloud in school as a supporting indicator. Further,

instruction should always strive to increase the student’s independent reading.

Questions for Students in Grades 3-5

The student’s teacher should set aside time to talk to the student about his or her reading skills and the need for text-to-

speech or human read aloud during the DeSSA ELA reading assessment. During this discussion, it may be appropriate to

use other terms to ensure that the student understands the questions. For example, if the student does not know the

term “text-to-speech,” perhaps refer to “screen readers” or “audio functions.” In addition, none of these questions on

their own indicates that it is appropriate to provide text-to-speech or read aloud to the student. Even when all of the

student’s answers to the questions indicate that the student prefers text-to-speech or read aloud, that information must

be balanced by evidence that the student has received intensive, targeted reading instruction.

The following questions can be used during this discussion.

1. Do you read to yourself when you are at home? If not, is it because you have trouble reading?

Students who are struggling readers generally do not want to read to themselves at school or at home, and avoid doing

so. Students in grades 3-5 usually will say that they “can’t read” if they have trouble reading. This in itself is not an

indication that text-to-speech or read aloud is an appropriate accommodation for the child. It is important to pair this

information with evidence that the student has received intensive, targeted reading instruction. If that is the case, then

with evidence that the intensive targeted reading instruction has not produced increased decoding or fluency skills, a

student response indicating that he or she does not read to himself or herself can contribute to a decision to provide

text-to-speech or read aloud for grade 3-5 ELA reading passages.

2. Is it harder or easier for you to understand a book if you read it yourself or if it is read to you through text-to-speech

or by another person?

Text-to-speech and read aloud accommodations require listening skills that students may not have gained if they do not

regularly use the accommodation. Asking whether it is easier to read for themselves or to listen to someone read may

provide an indication that text-to-speech or read aloud may be appropriate. Caution needs to be exercised here,

however, because struggling readers may indicate a preference for text-to-speech or read aloud even though they do

not understand better when the accommodation is provided (see section on Diagnostic Information to Collect). A

student response to this question indicating that the student thinks that it is easier to understand a book if it is read to

him or her should be verified through the collection of diagnostic information.

3. If you could choose, would you like to have tests read to you or would you prefer to read them yourself?

This simple question provides another indication of the student’s preference. Like the other questions in this section,

opting for having someone read to him or her does not necessarily mean it is appropriate to select text-to-speech or

read aloud for the student. It is important to pair this information with evidence that the student has received intensive,

targeted reading instruction, and that it has been unsuccessful in improving the decoding or fluency skills of the student.

Diagnostic Information to Collect

The questions indicate several types of data that should be collected and documented about the student in grades 3-5

who is being considered for the text-to-speech or read aloud accommodation. This information should be documented

so that it can contribute to the decision about whether the student in grades 3-5 should receive one of these

accommodations. Document the following:

• Nature and duration of targeted interventions provided to the student to improve decoding, fluency, or

comprehension skills

• Evidence of improvement or non-improvement following each targeted intervention

• Student performance with and without either text-to-speech or read aloud

One way to document student performance with and without the accommodation being considered is to have the

student respond to a simple reading achievement test or to DeSSA practice items with and without the accommodation.

Graphing performance will help identify patterns (as in the figure below). The testing dates and student performance

under each condition should be documented.

Even with performance data that indicate improved performance with the text-to-speech or read aloud

accommodation, it is important to differentiate whether the improvement is due to the effect of the student’s

disability or simply to poor reading skills not related to a disability. This differentiation can be informed by the

responses to the other items included here.

Conclusions

Because the decision to provide a student in grades 3-5 with text-to-speech or a human read-aloud

accommodation for the English language arts (ELA) reading assessment passages is a significant decision, with

possible long-term implications for the child, the decision must be made with extreme care. The questions included

here should be used to help inform that decision. Only when a preponderance of the information obtained from

responses to the questions reflect a need for either text-to-speech or read aloud, should the accommodation be

provided.

Optional Table 1. Documentation of Possible Need for Text-to-Speech or Read Aloud Accommodations for ELA Reading

Passages for Students with Disabilities in Grades 3-5