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Expert-Built Professional Learning

Accommodations or Modifications?

One hour, free, self-paced, and scored entirely by the system — there is nothing to submit and nothing to wait for. You will work through Florida's two rule definitions, the four categories of accommodation named in the statewide assessment rule, and the cases where the same adjustment is an accommodation on one assessment and a modification on another. Two interactive activities put the distinction to work: a ten-item sort where two items belong in neither bin, and an audit of a realistic IEP accommodations page where five of the eight entries are perfectly sound.
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Accommodations or Modifications?

Why This Learning Experience?

This self-paced professional learning experience is designed by an experienced educator to help you learn on your own schedule. Participants complete practical activities, connect ideas to real classroom practice, and build confidence through application-focused learning — with instant, auto-graded feedback along the way.

Learning Experience Overview

Ask ten teachers in a Florida school to explain the difference between an accommodation and a modification and you will get agreement on the general idea and disagreement on almost every specific case. That is not carelessness. The words are used loosely in staff rooms, and the loose usage has consequences once it reaches an IEP.

Florida does not leave the terms to interpretation. Both are defined in State Board rule, and the definitions are one sentence each. An accommodation changes how a student accesses information and demonstrates performance. A modification changes what the student is expected to learn.

Two words carry the whole distinction, and getting it wrong means a decision that belonged to the IEP team was made at a desk instead.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply Florida’s rule definitions to classify a proposed change as an accommodation or a modification.
• Identify which of the four accommodation categories a given adjustment belongs to.
• Explain why the same adjustment can be an accommodation on one assessment and a modification on another.
• Distinguish accommodations from supplementary aids and services.
• Apply the classroom-use condition that governs accommodations on Florida statewide assessments.
• Audit an accommodations page and identify entries that will cause a problem.

Who Should Participate?

Any Florida K–12 teacher who writes, implements, or is handed a student’s accommodations — which is to say nearly all of them. No prior ESE background is assumed.

General education teachers will find it most useful, because they implement accommodations written by someone else and are rarely trained in the distinction. ESE teachers and coaches will find the statewide assessment section and the accommodations-page audit the most valuable parts.

Teachers outside Florida will find the reasoning sound but the rule citations specific to Florida.

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