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Validity of Alternate Assessments

October 17 , 2005

Effective schooling depends on coordinating three components of the educational environment: curriculum, instruction and assessment. The degree to which these elements work together toward student learning is alignment. Alignment is the extent to which expectations and assessments agree and serve together to guide the system toward students learning what they are expected to know and do.

If a state's alternate assessments are intended to function as one element of a larger accountability system and to measure progress toward the same education expectations applied to the larger student population, then a state's general education academic standards should form the foundation for the alternate assessment.

Focusing on the alignment of the Wisconsin Alternate Assessment  (WAA) with Wisconsin's academic standards, an investigation by Norman Webb and colleagues provided content-related evidence for the WAA's validity. More information is available here.