Putting Alternate Assessments into Practice: What to Measure and Possible Sources of Data

The reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that states have alternate assessments in place by the year 2000. Personnel in departments of education are working on the development of alternate assessments that are to be used in accounting for the performance and progress of students with disabilities who do not participate in the typical state assessments. In this article, we define alternate assessment, describe methods that can be used to collect data, and describe domains in which data should be collected. We report the results of a focus group study in which teachers delineated ways in which data might be collected using each of the methods in each of the domains. We provide a set of initial thoughts that could serve as a starting point for designing alternate assessments.