What's the difference between accommodations and modifications, and why does the distinction matter? In this article, professor Lee Ann Jung explains that accommodations "provide access to the general curriculum but do not fundamentally alter the learning goal or grade level standard." For instance, if the purpose of an assessment is to gauge a student's mastery of a social studies standard, then an accommodation may allow a struggling writer to respond to questions orally instead of in writing. On the other hand, modifications are changes to the curriculum or assessments that alter the learning goal or grade level expectation, such as simplifying the types of multiplication problems on a math test. Jung argues that the distinctions between these two terms is important because educators need to understand which types of support are being administered if they want to measure and report progress accurately.