Alternate Assessment: Academic Learning for ALL

Let me start by saying that I am a big believer in Alternate Assessment. I think it’s important when the government passes laws like the No Child Left Behind Act that ALL truly means ALL. Now what I think of by all is probably different from what most think of as all. Most people do not know that students like mine exist; they are 1% of 1% of the population. These are students whose learning does not look like other 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders.

What pains me, particularly in New York State, is how we completely miss the point of alternate assessment when we start drafting guidelines that only include that students will “identify,” or “select,” to demonstrate their knowledge. My students cannot do that. But that does not mean we deny them access to academic knowledge.

In my first year as a lead teacher, I had the pleasure of working with six high school students with a range of multiple disabilities and complex healthcare needs. The warnings came from the beginning of the year, “watch out you’re going to have to do High School MCAS,” because of how demanding the paperwork would be. I never expected how much it would improve how I collect data and look at adapting materials for my students.

MCAS-Alt is Massachusetts’ alternate assessment. Each state is required by the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) to administer some form of alternate assessment to students with special needs who cannot participate in traditional exams. The goal is to demonstrate that all students have access to the general education curriculum. Students should have age appropriate access, which means they should be accessing material that is based on their chronological grade level. For example, you might thinking a 14 year old with multiple disabilities would love reading Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar (for the 14^th year of their life) because its simple and has bright colors, but really they are just as interested in the pictures and vocabulary in a non-fiction book on the Wright Brothers designing the first airplane.

After reviewing Massachusetts’ Science Standards, I decided that an interdisciplinary unit on "Inventions" would encompass a wide-range of motivating, multi-sensory learning experiences while collecting data for MCAS-Alt. What’s different than New York state is that I was collecting data on my students behaviors that enabled them to interact with grade-level content, rather than completing State-designed tasks. For one student, it was whether he was independently activating a switch to turn on a battery we constructed out of lemons. Another student was working on controlling her arm movements so that she could collect the materials we needed to construct the battery or other simple circuits that we built with the Life Skills’ teacher. We took field trips to a small local airport lead by a student’s father and the Boston Science Museum, where we a got a lesson in static electricity and the biggest smile I have ever seen from a student who is cortically blind and has very limited control over any body movements. Measuring their engagement and emerging communication skills easily aligned with their IEP goals. At the end of the unit, I constructed portfolios full of pictures and data charts that had meaning.

Students with complex healthcare needs just do not have time to waste on meaningless assessment tasks; two of my students passed away in less than a year after I taught this unit. I am at peace knowing that I gave them the fullest academic experience and at their funerals their parents specifically mentioned these scientific adventures. This is the power of alternate assessment when done right.

I’m sharing with you my experience with alternate assessment, because it was my hope that with the Common Core State Standards 50 states would take the opportunity to come together, rather than running in different directions and wasting energy doing the same alignments 50 times over. I will continue to share with you as I do more research into where alternate assessment has been and where it is going, including who should be participating. To start, here are New York State’s current guidelines. Two consortia have formed to design a common alternate assessment aligned to the Common Core, but New York State seems determined to continue to go it on its own judging from its current website on alternate assessment. Disappointingly, the draft now posted on the State Department of Ed website looks exactly like the Alternate Assessment (NYSAA) from previous years.

I’ll be back with more on this soon. Please comment below and share your own experiences with Alt Assessment.

The End of the Return from Bus Strike Honeymoon

Today officially marked the end of the lovely honeymoon period after the end of the bus strike when my students were so surprised and excited to be back in school that they listened to whatever I asked them to do. Today they would not. It felt like a day in September today, not March.

It started yesterday with the tickling, Juan would not stop touching and tickling anyone who came in his path, which set off all of the boys trying to tickle each other. Various consequences were threaten, it just would not stop, no one earned choice time. Today, Juan refused to go to his reading group and insisted on following the Physical Therapist (PT) around the room. I had to resort to taking his prized Dora the Explorer paddleball from his backpack. He immediately leapt to where he needed to be. Later in the day during Speech, I caught him lifting his shirt and making inappropriate gestures at the speech teacher’s back, which is usually a rare behavior for him. Since he did complete the rest of his work, he narrowly managed to earn choice time today.

Adama who did not come to school at all during the bus strike, has developed this unstoppable attitude. Now when I separate her from the group, after she hits or kicks her classmates, she talks back in order to continue to disrupt the group. She is more violent than she had been, in the past she had just been impulsive and accidently hurting her friends. Positive reinforcement is not working and I am going to have to come up with something new.

But the saddest for me was dealing with Florentina. Florentina is a student that has the most intensive sensory needs that I have ever seen. She uses a wheelchair because she walks unstably on her tippy toes. She is verbal, but speaks in memorized phrases. When she started in my classroom three years ago, every morning she would have a full blown, violent tantrum upon entering the classroom. I still have small scar marks from her pinching and scratching. People who visited my classroom back then are shocked to know that she is the same girl; her behavior has improved so much because of a consistent routine and the bond that we have formed. Then she missed almost 5 weeks of school because of the bus strike and an additional week due to doctors’ appointments and a cold.

Today Florentina lost it. When the Physical Therapist quickly transferred her, forgetting her old ways, to a new classroom chair that we received while she was out, it triggered a tantrum. She dangerously tried to slide herself out of the chair and hit or pinched anyone who came near, while crying and yelling. This is why you did not keep a child with special needs out of school for 5 weeks. It took all my attention from my 11 other students to prevent a full meltdown. I even gave her the marker that she had been fixated on, just because I knew how hard the transition was for her and that I could phase out the behavior another day. The crying continued as I tried to lead my small reading group on the other side of the room. Finally, 20 minutes later she calmed down enough to participate in a small group activity. This incident was not only hard on her, but disrupted everyone else in the classroom.

Math was also quite the challenge with Adama refusing to not touch everyone and everything. Everyone else’s new thing is to rest their heads on the table and feign tiredness. By the time choice time rolled around and I was trying to write notes home to parents, chaos had enveloped us with everyone complaining about everyone else. One or two kids having a bad day can quickly wear on everyone else in the room.

So the honeymoon is over, it’s time to revamp my behavior plans and schedule a few yoga classes afterschool. How long will it take Adama and Florentina to recover from this? Why do my other students and staff have to be distracted by their behaviors? As teachers, we welcome our students, close our doors and settle down to business, it’s just what we do. It just pains me that this loss of instruction was something that was unfairly done to my students and did not need to happen.

*Pseudonyms are used to protect identify of students