Assessing Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities on Academic Content

Federal and state policies require all students with significant cognitive disabilities to participate in state assessments and be included in measures of adequate yearly progress. Although these alternate assessments of grade-level content based on alternate achievement standards have been in place for several years, little is known about the knowledge and skills of students with significant cognitive disabilities or about the influence of these assessments on student learning. This study uses an empirically evaluated classification scheme of data from one cohort of students' participation in a statewide alternate assessment, Connecticut's Skills Checklist, to validate claims from teacher focus group interviews. Data from both components of the study suggest that nearly half of the teachers found the content on the Skills Checklist inaccessible for their students. Implications of this finding are discussed.