Assessment

Assessments are designed to determine the student's abilities and needs in relevant aspects of the curriculum and instruction. Educators need this essential tool to guide day-to-day instruction. The range of assessments may fluctuate from classroom assessment practices all the way to district and statewide assessment programs. Regular progress monitoring provides valuable information on teaching effectiveness, and is the basis for informed instructional decisions.

The Pennsylvania Alternate System of Assessment (PASA) is a reinterpretation of the Pennsylvania achievement standards, making them applicable for students with severe disabilities. Pennsylvania continues to implement No Child Left Behind and is preparing for our first NCLB Standards and Assessment Peer Review. As such, the Commonwealth needs to have "approved/adopted alternate academic achievement standards for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities in reading/language arts and mathematics." You may access the proposed standards electronically at the following links:

• Alternate Academic Standards for Reading
• Alternate Academic Standards for Mathematics
• Alternate Achievement Standards (Reading and Math at Grades 3, 5, 8 and 11)

These alternate standards will be used to develop tasks that students are given to perform. The evaluation of tasks performed assesses skills that are more useful or functional for students with significant disabilities. The tasks are developed at three difficulty levels to allow all students with significant disabilities to participate in the assessment. A videotape or narrative record is made as the student performs each task in the assessment. At the end of each school year a scoring conference is held at which teams of educators use scoring rubrics to score the students' records.