My Stupid Mistake During State Testing: What I Wish All Parents And Teachers Knew About Accommodations
The hum of 28 Chromebooks fills my 4th grade classroom mid-state ELA testing, and the only other sound is the scratch of a kid’s eraser three rows back. I’m on my 12th lap around the room, my socks slipping on the cold tile, my brain already stuck on the after-test vanilla latte I’m going to chug as soon as the bell rings. That’s when I see it: Lila, in the second row, has her left hand tucked tight under her desk, her screen tilted away just enough that I can’t see it from the aisle. Test security rules that year said any unapproved device or personal item out on a desk was an automatic violation, and I’d gotten two reminder emails that morning from admin about zero tolerance for rule breaks. I stopped dead next to her desk, leaned down, and said loud enough that three nearby kids looked up from their screens: “What do you have under there, Lila?”
Lila froze. Her cheeks flushed so bright I could see it from where I stood, and she squeezed her hand tighter, shaking her head. I was already wound tight from a week of early mornings and last-minute testing prep, so I let my frustration show. I told her if she didn’t show me what she was hiding, I’d have to mark her test as invalid and send her to the office. That’s when she pulled her hand out, and I felt my stomach drop. Clutched in her palm was the textured silicone pop it her occupational therapist had recommended for her anxiety, the one we’d added as a testing accommodation in her IEP that fall. I’d signed the form myself at parent-teacher conferences. I’d just completely forgotten.
She started crying, quiet shaking sobs that wouldn’t stop, while every other kid in the room stared. I walked her out to the school counselor right then, and she couldn’t finish her test that day. When I called her mom after school to apologize, she wasn’t even angry. She just said Lila had spent weeks panicking about testing, worried her fidget would be taken away because it “looked like cheating” to other people. She’d practiced keeping it under her desk to be discrete, so no one would notice. I’d just turned that fear into reality.
That’s the stupid mistake I still think about every testing season: I got so caught up in checking all the boxes for test security, following every rule to the letter, that I completely forgot the kid sitting right in front of me. The list of accommodations was in my digital file cabinet, buried under 17 other testing-related emails, and I never stopped to pull it up or commit it to memory. It didn’t matter that the rule against unapproved items was meant to stop cheating — it didn’t account for a kid who needed that fidget to even be able to focus enough to take the test in the first place.
After that year, I made a couple of small, concrete changes to how I prep for testing that I’ve kept ever since, and they’ve kept me from making that same mistake again. The first one is 10 minutes of prep the Friday before testing starts: I pull up the class accommodation list, and write a tiny, one-word or one-phrase note on a sticky note for every kid that needs an adjustment. “Fidget OK” goes on every fidget kid’s desk. “Extra break” goes on another. “Large print” goes on a third. I stick it in the top corner of the desk, where only I can see it, so when I’m doing my laps around the room and my brain is fried from all the rules, I glance down and I remember. No big fancy system, just a tiny sticky note that takes 2 minutes per kid to make.
The second thing I started doing is asking every kid with an accommodation to check in with me for two minutes the day before testing starts. We talk about where they’ll keep their fidget, or when they can take their extra breaks, and I tell them point blank: if anyone says anything to you about your thing, you send them to me. It’s your job to take this test, it’s my job to make sure you can do that. That talk takes almost no time, but it takes the weight off the kid’s shoulders, because they know I’ve got their back.
For parents, this mistake taught me something really practical, too. Even if your school has your kid’s accommodation on file, even if you signed all the forms in the fall, send a quick two-line email to your kid’s teacher the week before testing starts. It doesn’t have to be pushy: “Just a quick reminder that Jamie needs his fidget toy allowed during testing, thanks so much!” It’s not that teachers don’t care — it’s that we’re juggling 30 different kids, 20 different rules, and a dozen last-minute requests from admin that week. A quick reminder isn’t annoying. It’s helpful. If your kid is worried about their accommodation making them stand out, just mention that in the email, too. Most of us are happy to work out a discrete solution, like keeping a fidget under the desk or letting a kid take breaks in the hall when no one is looking.
I still see Lila sometimes. She’s in 7th grade now, and she still waves at me when she’s walking through the elementary school for a club meeting. She retook her test the next week, got the accommodation she needed, and passed easily. I still make small mistakes during testing, every year. Last year, a kid’s sticky note fell off when he set his water bottle down, and I almost forgot he needed extra time until I was checking end-of-test logs halfway through the day. We fixed it, no harm done.
State testing is always going to be messy, and it’s always going to come with a million rules that take all your focus. But the whole point of the rules and the tests is supposed to be about the kids, not the other way around. That stupid mistake I made that day was a good reminder, and I still carry it with me every spring.
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