Testing

The Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP) Alternate is a standards-based assessment designed specifically to ensure that students with the most significant cognitive disabilities are provided access to the state academic content standards and given the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge, concepts, and skills as set forth in the Alabama Alternate Achievement Standards. The primary purpose of the ACAP Alternate is to determine the level at which Alabama students are meeting the standards.

Federal law requires the use of an alternate assessment for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities receiving special education services who cannot participate in the state assessment program. Each state is required to establish its own definition of “significant cognitive disabilities.”

The content areas to be assessed are English Language Arts (ELA) and math in grades 2 through 8, 10, and 11; and science in grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 11.

The ACAP Alternate is an untimed assessment which allows for multiple breaks. The assessment can be completed over several days at the test administrator’s discretion, taking into account specific student needs.

The ACAP Alternate will be administered once a year in the spring.

English language proficiency test that aids in determining when an ELL student has attained the language proficiency needed to participate meaningfully in content area classrooms without program support and on state academic content tests without accommodations.

The ACT w/Writing is the Capstone of ACT College and Career Readiness Solutions and is aligned to Alabama's College and Career Readiness Standards.  It assesses reading, math, English and writing.  Scores are college-reportable.

If you register for the full ACT with writing, you will take the writing section after the four multiple-choice sections. Your score in the writing section will not affect your scores on the multiple-choice or your Composite score.

The writing section is a 40-minute essay test that measures your writing skills—specifically, writing skills taught in high school English classes and in entry-level college composition courses.

i-Ready is an online program for reading and/or mathematics that will help your student’s teacher(s) determine your student’s needs, personalize their learning, and monitor progress throughout the school year.

Visit the i-Ready Family Center at this link

See a list of AlaKiDS Skills Assessed at this link.

What is AlaKiDS?
AlaKiDS is a whole child assessment given in the first month of Kindergarten that will provide Kindergarten
teacher with needed information on a child's independent skills and abilities. This will be a valuable tool to help
guide instruction and set goals for each child.

Why AlaKiDS?
Due to COVID19, Alabama’s early learning programs, child care, and the livelihoods of families have been disrupted.
This disruption has put many of Alabama’s children at risk of entering kindergarten behind the widely held
expectation of a typically developing five-year-old. AlaKiDS is a whole child assessment that will provide the
Kindergarten teacher with needed information on a child's independent skills and abilities.

How will the assessment be given?
Teachers will administer the assessment during the first month of school to obtain the most accurate results.
Assessment is administered in small group settings and/or with individual child. AlaKiDS is an online portfolio
with a paper version included for data collection purposes. A materials kit will be provided.

How long does the assessment take?
Teachers will have 3-4 weeks from the beginning of school to give the assessment. It does not have to be
administered in a particular time frame as long as all children are completed by the fourth week.

Can assessment be done virtually if needed?
The Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education is currently working to respond to this possibility. There is a
family engagement component with AlaKiDS.

In 2012, the Alabama legislature secured a bi-partisan vote that created the Legislative School Performance Recognition Program Act – Act No. 2012-402, which legally requires a letter grade assessment to be assigned to most Alabama public schools. In accordance with this law, as well as the requirements for Alabama’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, Alabama school officials have worked to create the Alabama State Report Card.

The Alabama State Report Card is designed so parents, educators, stakeholders, and others can easily understand how their schools are doing, just as report cards help parents understand how their kids are doing. The goals of the Alabama State Report Card are to provide a starting point, with easy-tounderstand and concise information showing how a school is doing, and to make sure that schools are accountable for explaining that to their communities.

No one score or grade tells the whole story of a school. The Alabama State Report Card uses multiple indicators, including academic achievement, academic growth, chronic absenteeism, graduation rates and college and career readiness (in high schools). We encourage educators, parents and others to dig deeper by visiting the Alabama State Department of Education’s Data Center on the website (www.alsde.edu). We also encourage teachers and administrators to use this as an opportunity to discuss efforts they are making at their local school to improve education.

Hopefully, regardless of the letter grade received, the introduction of the Alabama State Report Card will spark conversation, ideas and solutions to some of the barriers in public education. Knowing the presented information better enables parents and others to make determinations about how their school(s) are doing, and to ask informed questions of their school and district administrators.

The ACAP Summative will be administered to grades 2-8, once a year, in the spring.

• The assessment will be administered 100% online, with the exception of a documented need for paper assessments.

• The content areas to be addressed are math and English/language arts, to include a writing section.

• In addition, grades 4,6, and 8 will be administered an assessment in science.

• The Grade 2 assessment will not be used for measuring achievement for accountability purposes but will serve as a baseline for 3rd-grade growth.

• The writing assessment will be administered to students in grades 4-8 and will comprise a text dependent analysis in order to develop a comprehensive, holistic essay response. The demand required of a student's reading and writing skills in response to a text-dependent analysis prompt is similar to the demands required for a student to be a college -and -career ready.

• Test items will be aligned to the Alabama Courses of Study.

ACAP Summative Online Tools - ACAP Online Tools Training

PreACT provides students with a structured testing environment similar to what they will experience when taking the ACT, ACT test-quality questions, and predictive scores on the familiar 1–36 scale. This helps students get comfortable with the test and understand how they’re doing in core subjects. It also helps parents and educators identify areas where additional support might be necessary.

What is mCLASS?
mCLASS is a universal screener that measures the development of reading skills of all students in grades K-5 through two main assessments: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and the Text Reading Comprehension (TRC) assessments.

What skills are measured?
These combined tests help teachers determine how students are performing on the important reading skills that children must develop in order to become proficient readers.