Little research has precisely defined the population of students participating in alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS). Therefore, the purpose of this article is twofold: (a) explicate the findings of a multistate study examining the characteristics of the population of students participating in AA-AAAS, and (b) discuss the implications of those findings for instruction and assessment that move us closer to understanding what these students know and can do. The article discusses the results of our study within and across these seven states, implications for practitioners, and future research directions that should be considered for both instruction and assessment.
The purpose of this study was to examine all states’ participation guidelines for alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) and to analyze these guidelines for common and contrasting themes. State alternate assessment participation guidelines were found for all 50 states. Participation guidelines were coded, and 12 categories emerged. These categories fell into four major patterns: not included in almost all states’ participation guidelines, evenly distributed between being included and not included, included in the majority of states’ participation guidelines, and included in almost all states’ participation guidelines. This research can help state-level personnel revise and improve their own participation guidelines by providing information about current language used in participation guidelines and can inform the field of the level of consistency in the language used to describe the population who participate in AA-AAS.
I magine you're a graduate with an affinity for mathematics attending your first job interview. As part of the interview process, you are asked to solve the puzzle involving a cat on a ladder (see figure 1). You answered C and got it right! Next you are presented with a similar problem (see figure 2), but the assumptions have changed. Numerous observations have found that it is likely that you will answer A or B. If you did, it's wrong and, unfortunately, your chances of getting the job may well have slipped away. The answer to the second problem is also C and the solution can be demonstrated using basic mathematics (see figure 3). Puzzles such as these are used by many companies as part of their job interview process in order to evaluate candidates' problem-solving skills. They consider that the ability to solve puzzles relates to the creative thinking required to solve innovative real-life problems.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.