Alternative Assessment # 4

It is that time a year, even though we just started school, when schools start to talk about state assessments. In North Dakota, they offer alternative assessment for special education students. The state offers two types of alternative assessment: NDAA 1 (North Dakota Alternative Assessment) and NDAA 2. NDAA 1 is offered to students with severe cognitive disabilities. They are assessed against alternative assessment standards. NDAA 2 is offered to students with persistent learning difficulties. They are assessed at grade level with modified achievement standards. I like the idea of special education students who are under the label SLD, MH, SMH to be able to take the state assessment that is written at a more realistic ability level. The following link is a resource used by parents, teachers, and administrators to provide special education students with the best education opportunities http://www.dpi.state.nd.us/speced/resource/alternate/brochure.pdf. Every year at the annual review of a student, the team decides if that student should take the regular state assessment, NDAA 1, NDAA2, or a combination of state assessment and NDAA 2 or NDAA 2 and NDAA 1.

With any type of assessment, they get changed over time, some more than others. Last year the NDAA 2 assessment was changed for the second time in two years. After deciding that a few of my students (the team decided at their annual review) will take the NDAA 2 and giving them the NDAA 2 was the proper form of assessment the next year, the assessment was changed. When the NDAA 2 was given to the same students the following year (after it was changed), it was shown not to be the proper assessment for them. That they should have been given the NDAA 1. The NDAA 2 was more difficult and asked questions that asked numerous questions that required knowledge (either background or taught in school) that the student did not have, for example: one Language Arts short paragraph asked the students about crayfish. Most of my students do not know what a crayfish is, for that matter, my own children would not know what a crayfish is if we did not go to the lakes every weekend. It was hard when the students would tell me that they did not know what a crayfish was and would ask what it was and I could not tell them. It is very difficult to know what assessment the student should take knowing that it may be fine for them one year, but not the next year. As a member of an IEP team, I had a difficult time saying that the NDAA 2 was appropriate for a student two years ago, but it was too difficult for them last year and know that we will have to decide which assessment they will appropriate to take this year.

I would like to know why states feel the need to change an assessment that in my opinion was fine, like the old saying ‘why reinvent the wheel.’ A few of my co-workers joined an alternative assessment task force with state officials to work on writing the alternative assessment. When they returned, they felt that what they had to say was listened to by the state officials, but that was all. Some felt it was a waste of time and the only reason they were there so the state could say that they listened to the teachers.

Do other states offer alternative assessment for special education students instead of their standardized state assessments? How do they decide who take it and who does not? How often do they change the assessment?