With the enhanced English Language Arts (ELA) assessment in 2024 and the focus on the science of reading, the Kansas State Department of Education’s Career Standards and Assessment Services team worked with national technical advisors to provide guidance for the appropriate accommodations needed for the ELA assessment.

Beginning this year, students in grades 3-5 will not have the text-to-speech (TTS) accommodation available for ELA questions and responses.  

KSDE’s ELA standards in grades 3-5 contain decoding, fluency and comprehension. The assessment integrates the ability to read and the ability to understand what was read. Allowing students to use TTS on the questions and responses does not give an accurate report on what the student can do. Using TTS invalidates the construct of the test. Providing the TTS on the assessment can also have negative consequences for instruction. If the student is no longer receiving instruction on decoding and fluency skills and uses TTS instead, the opportunity to read during the day is not given to the student. 

Click here for an article on text-to-speech research. 

The decision to not use TTS was made after many conversations with the KSDE team and the national experts on the technical advisory council. The team worked extensively to ensure the enhanced assessment was written at the correct text complexity for each grade. This included passages and questions. The reason behind removing the test question option was to align with the KSDE mission and vision around making sure all students can read. The focus in grades 3-5 is on learning to read.  

The KSDE team and national experts also addressed decoding standards. With the previous assessment, the Personal Needs Profile (PNP) was applied to all subjects. The only way to ensure students had the TTS they needed for math was to have the text and graphics setting. KSDE was able to add TTS as a universal feature for math for the 2025 assessment. This enabled KSDE to make the changes for TTS around ELA.  

The TTS Fact Sheet goes into detail on the TTS accessibility features available for 2025. For those students who are using TTS on a regular basis and who have an approved TTS passages and graphics application, all text including passages will be available for all grades including 3-5. This is due to the purpose of the application being for those students who require accessible educational materials to access grade level text due to a print disability. 

The following links are new resources available for TTS: 

Considerations for Accessible Educational Materials (PDF) 
TTS Fact Sheet 
TTS for Passages and Graphics Application 

With the TTS changes this year, the only TTS available for ELA for elementary level students is the passages and graphics. You will need to follow the guidelines on the TTS fact sheet and TTS passages and graphics application. KSDE will not approve students with a Lexile of 500 or higher (this criterion has not changed from the previous year).  

KSDE requires the Protocol for Accommodations in Reading (PAR) be administered using TTS or a screen reader and the results entered on the application. KSDE allows the PAR or Universal Protocol for Accommodations in Reading (uPAR) to be used. The student must demonstrate an accuracy of at least 50% on the PAR for approval. Start at the student’s grade level and drop grade levels as needed until the student scores are at least a 50% on the comprehension questions. The TTS for Passages and Graphics Application can be found on the KSDE assessment page.  

Several years ago, KSDE provided two model accommodations examples that would not need to be adjusted based on KSDE approval:  

• Example 1: Consistent with the accommodations that Sean is using in the classroom, he will receive the following accommodations on statewide assessments: Simultaneous visual and auditory access to text through the independent use of text-to-speech for all allowable parts of the assessment. 
• Example 2: The district will apply for approval of TTS for ELA passages on the state assessment. If TTS for ELA passages is approved, the student would receive TTS for the ELA passages. If it is not approved, the student would receive test questions and answer choices through TTS when allowed (This applies to grades 6-10.). 

  
Contact Cary Rogers, crogers@ksde.org, with questions.