Teaching Test-taking Strategies to Improve the Academic Achievement of Students with Mild Mental Disabilities

This study examined the effects of teaching a test-taking strategy to 4 fourthand fifth-grade students with mild mental disabilities on reading and math achievement. The intervention consisted of a direct and explicit instructional method using a mnemonic strategy. The participants’ acquisition and application of the test-taking strategy on reading and math probes were evaluated using a multiple probe across participants design. All participants demonstrated the ability to apply the strategy on probes during the intervention, 2-week maintenance, and generalization conditions. Significant gains in achievement were observed for all participants. Implications of teaching test-taking strategies to students with mild to moderate mental disabilities were discussed. As achievement accountability measures continue to increase in the public education system, so do the expectations for students with disabilities. Current legislation enforces the need for students with disabilities to have access to the general education curriculum, and in turn for states to assess those students through standardized achievement measures. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 requires that all students in grades three through eight take state-wide achievement tests in reading and math (Goertz & Duffy, 2003). The NCLB Act in combination with the amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA, 2004), which states that all students must be included in state and district assessments, present challenges of test-taking to students with disabilities (Washburn-Moses, 2003). The performance of students with disabilities on standardized achievement tests is at least, in part, responsible for states attaining what the federal government outlined in the NCLB Act as Adequately Yearly Progress (AYP). To meet AYP, schools must attain goals related to achievement for certain targeted groups of students, including students with disabilities. As a result, performance on standardized achievement tests has high stakes for students with disabilities. Additionally, school districts may use test scores of students with disabilities to decide placement, grade level promotion, or to determine whether or not a student graduates (Heubert & Hauser, 1999). By the nature of their disabilities, many students in special education programs have difficulty demonstrating knowledge through standardized achievement tests. Specifically, students with disabilities have difficulty with cognitive and metacognitive task demands. They often need help to approach a learning activity (such as test taking), and require systematic methods of training to acquire thinking skills (Henley, Ramsey, & Algozzine, 2005). Students with disabilities also often have difficulty organizing information and responding to complex questions. For example, a student with a learning disability may have content knowledge (e.g., in math or science), but have difficulty demonstrating the knowledge in a standardized format. In other words, students’ lack of test taking skills may appear as academic deficiencies (Scruggs & Marsing,