Associate Professor Sara Witmer is leading a study to better understand how students with disabilities use extended time accommodations during math tests. Funded by a $702,473 grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, Witmer will examine this widely used testing accommodation, and hopes to provide educators and policymakers with evidence-based recommendations to better support students.
Extended time accommodations are a common support provided to students with disabilities through Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), with nearly 60% of these students qualifying for this adjustment according to Witmer. However, previous studies question the effectiveness of extra time.
The research raises critical questions: Are schools using extended time in ways that truly help students succeed, or could alternative approaches be more effective?
Leveraging big data for insights
The study utilizes data from the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics assessment for 4th and 8th-grade students. NAEP, known as “the Nation’s Report Card,” provides a nationally representative sample of student performance. A unique aspect of the study is its intentional focus on students with disabilities, a group often overlooked in large-scale analyses of test data.
Researchers will analyze process data—detailed, timestamped logs of student interactions during computer-administered tests—to understand how students use their testing time. This data captures moment-by-moment behaviors, such as how long students spend on specific questions, their use of accessibility tools like text-to-speech and whether they revisit answers or guess quickly.
By analyzing these interactions, Witmer and her team hope to identify patterns in how students with disabilities use extended time and how these behaviors relate to test performance. The study also examines a wide range of factors, including student characteristics like motivation and ability, as well as test question features such as difficulty level and reading demands.
Co-principal investigators on the study include Ben Lovett (Teachers College, Columbia University) and Heather Buzick (Educational Testing Service).
Improving testing policies
By identifying time-use behaviors associated with better outcomes, the research could guide more precise decision-making about who should receive extended time accommodations. It could also inspire innovations in test design, such as embedded prompts to help students manage their time effectively.
Witmer highlights that extended time accommodations can lead to unintended negative consequences, such as students misusing time by excessively rechecking answers, or becoming distracted. She also notes that extended time may hinder opportunities for students to develop critical time-management skills, reduce their sense of self-efficacy for completing tasks under time pressure and take away valuable instructional time.
“Extended time accommodations can sometimes lead to wasted academic time if students lack the skills to use it effectively,” she said. “For some students, it may facilitate excessive checking of responses or off-task behaviors that don’t contribute to better measurement of underlying student skills. It may be that this extra test time could be better spent teaching students related skills they may be lacking, such as basic academic skills, time management skills or those for managing anxiety.”
With the project concluding in August 2026, the results could inform state-level policies regarding extended time accommodations.
“Extended time is likely a necessary accommodation for some students to showcase their skills and knowledge during testing,” said Witmer. “However, with how widely it’s provided, there is a need to closely examine who truly benefits from it and whether, in some cases, we might be unintentionally contributing to long-term challenges.”
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