Alabama Alternate Assessment

The primary purpose of the Alabama Alternate Assessment is to assess students' mastery of state extended content standards in reading, mathematics, and science.  The AAA is a criterion-referenced portfolio assessment administered to students with significant cognitive disabilities working on the Alabama Extended Standards.

The AAA is actually a process occurring throughout the school year. This process follows these steps: the teacher teaches and collects pieces of evidence reflective of the student's performance on a particular complexity level for each grade-level extended content standard throughout the school year.  The teacher selects three pieces of evidence per extended content standard to send as the student's Body of Evidence. Evidence scored includes student worksheets/teacher tests, student work samples, annotated photographs, scripted audio/video, and written performance summaries.  The compilation of the Body of Evidence completes the assessment process. 

The pieces of evidence in the Body of Evidence are scored using the AAA Rubric:  alignment to the Extended Content Standard; Complexity of the Extended Content Standard; Level of Assistance Used; Mastery of Content.  Performance is reported on four levels with the goal of students scoring a Level III or Level IV, meeting or exceeding academic content standards.