This factor is related to educators' entrenched concern about cheating. Even if students use supports and scaffolds when learning, teachers tend to feel that these supports should be removed for testing in order to determine what students "really know."
Consider that when calculators first appeared in schools, teachers never dreamed of allowing students to use these tools during a test. It was something of a given that to attain mathematical competency, students needed to be able to perform rapid calculations in their heads. Calculators were viewed as a crutch. But today, in advanced mathematical disciplines, teachers commonly allow calculator use during exams. They now realize that scaffolding calculation is reasonable and appropriate when assessing mathematical concepts and reasoning.
Similarly, many teachers once felt it was inappropriate to allow students to use a word processor on a test. Perhaps they feared that typed responses and the availability of a spell checker might obscure students' problems with mechanics, or even that the computer would somehow "think" for the students. The validity of these concerns depends on the goal of the assessment; however, research shows that students accustomed to working with word processors score significantly lower on tests of composition and expression when they are assessed without them (Russell & Haney, 2000).
These examples remind us why it's important to focus on the goal of an assessment and separate out the tangential variables. In our view, as long as the goal itself is not being scaffolded by a particular tool, it is foolish to remove a learner's daily supports during assessment. Suppose you take a professional cooking course, and your final exam is to prepare a fruit soufflé within a certain time limit—a simulation of real restaurant conditions. During your training, you have had regular access to all the tools found in a modern professional kitchen: food processors, electric mixers, and ovens that heat quickly and evenly. Now suppose these appliances are disallowed during the test. The clock is ticking, and you have to hand-chop the fruit, hand-whip the eggs, and preheat a slow oven with an inaccurate temperature gauge. Does this test accurately measure your skill at preparing a soufflé in restaurant conditions? Clearly not.
There are many parallel examples in the classroom. Let's suppose Patrick usually relies on digital text with text-to-speech capability to help him obtain social studies content in a timely fashion. He does most of his social studies-related writing with the help of word processing software equipped with word prediction and spell checking tools. Will the results of a handwritten essay exam accurately reflect Patrick's social studies knowledge? Remember, this test's purpose is to measure mastery of social studies content-not Patrick's reading, handwriting, or spelling abilities.
Although some may feel that providing Patrick this reading, writing, and spelling support is unfair, we think the absence of these tools will confound Patrick's assessment results in the same way that the absence of the kitchen appliances would confound your performance on the soufflé test. When the supports do not undermine the central goal of the assessment, it is perfectly reasonable and, in fact, more accurate to include them.