Project Description

The AAD—English Language Arts/Reading project combines current knowledge from multiple disciplines to advance the design of alternate assessment performance tasks for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The approach integrates recent work in (1) the pedagogy of special education for students with significant cognitive disabilities (Browder & Spooner, 2003), (2) alternate assessment design (Bechard, 2005), and (3) universal design for learning (CAST, 2008) with (4) evidence-centered assessment design (Mislevy & Haertel, 2006). This work is guided by federal guidelines for alternate assessment design that specify that “all students, including students with disabilities, be held to grade-level achievement standards when taking assessments” (U.S. Department of Education, 2005).

The goals of the project are to

1. Extend the conceptual framework of evidence-centered design to alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards using the Principled Assessment Design for Inquiry (PADI) assessment design system.


2. Integrate the principles of universal design for learning (UDL) with ECD to guide the development of tasks that are accessible to all learners.


3. To select a set of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that represent critical areas of learning common across all three states in Reading Literature, Reading Informational Text, Foundational Reading, Writing, Language, and Speaking and Listening on which to base the design and development of assessment tasks using ECD.


4. Develop AA—AAS assessment design patterns, task templates, assessment task specifications, and exemplar tasks that address Common Core State Standards in English language arts for students with significant cognitive disabilities.


5. Evaluate the exemplar assessment tasks produced using ECD through task try-outs in all three states.


6. Enhance the human capital of state departments of education staff in learning how to use ECD to design and develop assessment tasks for use with students with significant cognitive disabilities, including the provision of procedural guidelines.


7. Support state department of education staff and teachers in the development of additional performance tasks in English language arts to expand the task bank for each state.


8. Provide participating states with a library of design patterns, task templates, and task specifications that are reusable and extendable to the authoring of additional performance tasks in English language arts.