As part of the PSS assessment and accountability requirements, students with the most significant disabilities are participating in a curriculum based on the same academic content standards that their grade-level peers are learning.
The content is age-appropriate, engaging and challenging.
Sometimes they interact with this same content in slightly different ways compared to their classmates — through assistive technology, pictures, symbols or texture, or through whatever methods they use to communicate.
They also show what they have learned in creative and exciting ways.
Students with significant cognitive disabilities participate in state assessments through an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards.
This assessment is designed for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities and will measure achievement separately in reading and language arts, math and science.
This alternate assessment makes it possible for students to show what they have learned, and for the school to be held accountable for that achievement.
During the March 20 training around 50 general, special education teachers and teacher aides throughout the school system, as well as a few related service providers, gathered at Oleai Elementary School to share ideas, techniques and strategies, while focusing on the alternate assessment and various accommodations regarding their students’ individual needs.
This training was facilitated by Lizelle Amirez, assessment apecialist, and Laura Bucknell, speech language pathologist.
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