Virtual assessments for students with disabilities: A case study from India: Virtual assessment in reading

Abstract

The pandemic in India impacted over 247 million learners (UNICEF, 2021). Children with disabilities were at a significant disadvantage, losing access to rehabilitation, medical and remedial services (Verneker et al., 2020). This article presents a guide to assessing students virtually. It explores one teacher’s attempts to navigate learning to read remotely using a digital curriculum-based measurement tool, Fluency Assessment for Benchmarking in Literacy education (FABLe). It discusses the processes she employed to set goals, monitor progress, and structure virtual assessments over the course of an academic year to build reading fluency. Overall, virtual assessments were easy to conduct. Teachers require two devices when conducting FABLe virtually, one to share the reading passage, and one to mark progress. FABLe provides end-of-year benchmark goals that can be used as individual target goals for students. More research is needed to develop benchmarks specific to the Indian context. FABLe data were most useful when communicating progress with parents and informing instructional practices. Many processes used to implement FABLe virtually can be applied to face-to-face settings, such as goal setting and progress monitoring schedules. Learning was impacted for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who struggled with access to the internet and support in the home settings.