Special Topic Area:
Alternate Assessments for Students with
Disabilities
Introduction
Alternate assessments are tools used to
evaluate the performance of students who are unable to participate in
regular state assessments even with accommodations. Alternate assessments
provide a mechanism for students with the most significant cognitive
disabilities and for other students who may need alternate assessment
formats to be included in the accountability system.
Alternate assessments are relatively new in most states, developed for
students who were not included in most large-scale assessments until Federal
law mandated their participation. The requirement for states to develop
these assessments first appeared in the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act Amendments of 1997 (IDEA 97). Regulations for the No Child
Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) included the results of these assessments in
its accountability requirements. NCLB regulations clarified that more than
one type of alternate assessment may be used by a state, and that students
with significant cognitive disabilities participating in alternate
assessments could be held to alternate achievement standards (December 2003
Title I Regulations). On April 9, 2007, an
additional option was defined in Title I and IDEA regulations. These regulations
allow states to develop modified academic achievement standards that are
challenging for eligible students and measure a student's mastery of
grade-level content, but are less difficult than grade-level achievement
standards.
The primary purpose for alternate assessments in state assessment systems is
to increase the capacity of large-scale accountability systems to create
information about how a school, district, or state is doing in terms of
overall student performance. Gathering data on the performance of students
through alternate assessments requires rethinking traditional assessment
methods. An alternate assessment is neither a traditional large-scale
assessment nor an individualized diagnostic assessment. For students with
disabilities, alternate assessments can be administered to students who
differ greatly in their ability to respond to stimuli, solve problems, and
provide responses.
Since the inception of alternate assessments, the population of students
deemed by States and IEP teams as eligible for these assessments ranged from
students with severe and profound disabilities to some students with
moderate and other disabilities. In most cases, these students have
represented less than 1% of the total population assessed in a large-scale
assessment. However, the April 2007 Title
I and IDEA Regulations may lead to a greater variety of alternate
assessments for a broader and more diverse student population.
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