"Alternative assessments" refers to different ways of evaluating or testing someone's knowledge or skills that are different from traditional exams or quizzes. It means using different methods, such as projects, performances, presentations, or portfolios, to measure what someone has learned or can do.
Full definition
The state will have to determine whether it will adopt
alternative assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities or modify such assessments t already has place.
Her extensive career in education includes 35 years as a master elementary educator and researcher in the development and use
of alternative assessments and integrated instruction.
They might also ask test developers for tools with which to compare scores
on alternative assessments with those on regular assessments.
In other cases, students with disabilities have test scores that can not be used to calculate value - added because they
take alternative assessments.
But as I
embraced alternative assessments, I was pleasantly surprised at how students were able to show me what they had learned without having to prove it on traditional tests.
In the intermediate term, create or allow teachers to create
alternative assessments like those used with students with disabilities to accommodate different ways of demonstrating mastery of a subject.
Ultimately we saw about 25 percent of our students who regularly chose to
do alternative assessments instead of the traditional tests.
However,
using alternative assessments makes it difficult to compare the performance of ESA students to students in other schools, both public and private.
In other words, attrition among special education students in reading was so extreme that their eighth - grade numbers dropped to an average of only 1.4 grade students with
alternative assessments in four years!
The bill would replace state - created or written examinations
with alternative assessments for school districts that do not use state tests, with regulations set by the state Education Department.
Other measures of reading proficiency that are already in place in North Carolina classrooms and were submitted
as alternative assessments to meet the Read to Achieve requirements include the Discovery Education Reading / Language arts assessment, Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments, and ClassScape, among many others.
Members of the State Board of Education approved today multiple
alternative assessment methods for determining third grade reading proficiency, which were put forth by local school districts in an effort to reduce the burdensome testing methods that have...
in pre, imbedded, post assessments a suitable
alternative assessment tools should be used and specified to measure the complex learning outcomes.
Dr. Helen Barrett's favorite links on Alternative Assessment & Electronic Portfolios This is an excellent list of resources for delving
into alternative assessment on the internet.
Concerned that a state testing program subjects young children to undue stress, the Arizona legislature has passed a bill that would limit mandatory 1st - grade testing to a sample of students while the state
develops alternative assessment measures.
Yet, there are potential limitations, such as insufficient time and resources to effectively
implement alternative assessments in all classrooms, leaving room for future research about how teachers can most effectively use oral assessment to identify and close gaps in students» understanding.
For example, an administrator might notice that a
new alternative assessment asks students to consider diverse opinions, but that the texts students encounter outside of that one assessment reflect a single point of view or perspective.
Lawmakers in a number of states have stopped or slowed plans in recent months to use
alternative assessments designed to measure students» higher - order thinking skills.
He should instead examine the extensive 2006 National Research Council report on «Systems for State Science Assessment» or the excellent assessment section in the draft «National Educational Technology Plan 2010,» from the U.S. Department of Education, which describes multiple ways of
making alternative assessments practical.
While any assessment requires some type of active retrieval, having students reconstruct what they know through
alternative assessments leads to deeper understanding and consolidates learning in more powerful ways than traditional testing (Karpicke & Blunt).
Furthermore, it is important to note that the performance of Chicago's students on
alternative assessments continued to increase in absolute terms, which may mean that there was no substantial tradeoff in skills learned.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers highlighted the continued closing of the gap between white and minority student scores on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination and
Wisconsin Alternative Assessments for Students with Disabilities.
These assessments include SOL tests and other measures of student achievement,
including alternative assessments taken by certain students with disabilities and children with limited English proficiency.
Just as badging systems can be seen as a subset of
alternative assessment models and used in coordination with other approaches, such as ePortfolios, badging systems can also be seen as a subset of ways to gamify education and be used in coordination with such things as point systems and leaderboards.
(PDF)-- As announced in Superintendent's Memo # 284 - 16, the new local
alternative assessment guidelines replace the Local Alternative Assessment Guidelines for 2014 -2015-This is a PDF document.
The reason ENL teachers are still evaluated using the Common Core aligned NYSESLAT and teachers of students who
get alternative assessments are evaluated by that is because there has not been a high percentage of opt outs for those tests.