Accommodation: Changes made in how a student accesses and demonstrates learning. These do not substantially change the instructional level, the content or the performance criteria. The changes are made in order to provide a student equal access to learning and equal opportunity to demonstrate what he or she knows. Changes to the way students are presented information and are tested. They can enable students with a disability to take the same kinds of tests and courses as typically developing peers, thus meeting similar state and local standards.

Accountability systems: Methods that use systematized tests or evaluations to inform professionals or members of the community of the direction in which schools are moving (Lewis, 2000). Most recently there has been three types or levels of accountability systems in our schools: system or school level accountability, teacher accountability, and student accountability.

Advanced organizers: Refers to pre-teaching events that structure the learning situation and provide low-achieving students a framework for integrating new knowledge with old; can serve as visual reminders (e.g., outline or assignment on the board) or verbal statements made by the teacher about the task or topic.

Anchored Instruction: Instruction that aids students in actively learning by situating, or anchoring, their instruction around a topic interesting to them, emphasizes the need to provide students with opportunities to think about and work on problems based on a foundation of understanding from previous experience.

Assessment: Assessments might require a connection with national, state, or local standards. In the modules, we suggest there can be a meaningful instructional link between standards, classroom teaching, classroom and standardized assessment, and addressing student needs.

Authentic Assessments: Present the student with the full array of tasks that mirror the priorities and challenges found in the best instructional activities: conducting research; writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc.

Benchmarks: A specified standard that contains a measurable original, or source description, against which other instances of behavior representing that content can be assessed.

Content Standards: Statements of expectations of what students in a particular subject or grade level should know and be able to do. Defining statements for teachers, schools, students, and the community what schools should teach.

Curriculum-Based Assessments: Take place within the natural context of schooling. In brief, these assessments work to take the rightness or wrongness out of teaching and place more of an emphasis on observations of how well the student has learned, and in tandem how well the teacher has taught (Brooks & Brooks, 1993). As Newman, Griffin, and Cole (1989) point out, "instead of giving children a task and measuring how well they do or how badly they fail, one can give the children the task and observe how much and what kind of help they need in order to complete the task successfully. In this approach, the child is not assessed alone. Rather, the social system of teacher and child is dynamically assessed to determine how far along it has progressed" (p. 77-78). This process of assessment allows teachers to see where students are breaking down in their ability to complete a task or master a skill. Knowing where the problem lies in the student's ability to succeed, teachers can take steps to overcome that problem and empower the student to learn in a more appropriate and individualized manner.

De facto standards: The de facto standards are commonly accepted by the marketplace and are shared by a working constituency. Common practices or dominant market shares establish them.

Formal standards: Consist of sets of standards established by law, or by recognized standard-setting bodies such as the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) or International Standards Organizations (ISO).

Graphic organizers: Visual displays conveying relationships among the facts, vocabulary, and the concepts developed.

High-stakes Testing: Intertwined in discussions surrounding accountability systems, includes assessments that are created for meaningful evaluation or decision making.

Modifications: Substantial changes in what a student is expected to learn and demonstrate in school and should be considered only after all types of accommodations have been exhausted.

Portfolios: A collection of student work that is structured to meet an expectation set forth by the teacher, often used as a long-term progress assessment.

Pre-assessment Accommodations: Changes that take place before the actual assessment occurs and within a period of time that allows students to master and become able to apply strategies in real-life assessment situations, taking the form of test-taking strategies, specific content preparation, and self-revising or error monitoring.

PREP Pre-teaching strategy: A pre-teaching strategy developed by Ellis (1989) to engage the student in thought about an upcoming lesson before the lesson actually begins. This strategy ensures that the student comes prepared to the class bringing a positive attitude, as well as, the materials, to the content-area class. The PREP acronym stands for: P = Prepare materials. R = Review what you know. E = Establish a positive mindset. Suppress 'put-downs' and make a positive statement. P = Pinpoint goals

Presentation Accommodations: Changes in how information is presented to the student, including, for example, large-print, Braille editions of tests, directions read aloud by test administrator, test items read aloud by test administrator, test given by person familiar to child, standard directions read several times at start of exam, directions reread for each new page of test items, directions given in simplified language, key words in directions (such as verbs) underlined or highlighted, directions provided for each new set of skills in the exam, directions repeated as needed.

Publicly Available Specifications (PAS): Refers to standards developed when several leading firms within a market arena or an academic content area join together in a consortium to define an interface standard.

Response Accommodations: Changes in the format for how a student provides answers, specific to the individual student's needs.

Setting adjustments: Changes in a student's setting to make it quieter and with limited distractions, including a carrel, the special education classroom, student seated in front of classroom, with teacher facing student, near student's special education teacher or aide, special lighting, special acoustics, individual testing stations for students responding verbally, adaptive or special furniture, and location with minimal distractions.

Standardized Tests: Assessments that offer the same conditions to all students to measure ability against a peer group.

Standards: The broadest of a set of terms referring to statements of expectations for student learning, including content standards.

Strategies: Techniques, principles, or rules that help students with mild disabilities learn how to learn independently and how to generalize their skills and behaviors to new situations.

Time adjustments: Alterations in how time is allotted that is most beneficial to the student during testing or daily lessons and assignments. Includes time of day or week most beneficial to student, multiple testing sessions, frequent breaks, extended time to complete tests, and untimed testing sessions.

Traceability: As defined in the International Vocabulary of Basic and General Terms in Metrology means, "The property of the result of a measure or the value of a standard whereby it relates to references, usually national or international standards, through an unbroken chain of comparisons all having stated uncertainties" (NIST Calibration Services, 2001). Another authoritative source, the ANSI/NCSL A540-1-1994, defines traceability as: "The property of a result of a measurement whereby it can be related to appropriate standards generally national or international standards, through an unbroken chain of comparisons" (NIST Calibration Services, 2001).

Universal design: Accommodating individual student needs for all students, possible through the use of digitally constructed lessons and technology.