all users confidence in the efficacy of the re-
sults. Key findings include:
• Alternate assessment was introduced
with the 1997 reauthorization of the Indi-
viduals with Disabilities Education Act, and
was followed by a gradual intensification of
expectations for students with severe dis-
abilities. It is intended for a small audience
of a state’s or district’s total population, with
a cap on using alternate assessments of only
1 percent of students. As a result of subse-
quent legislation, all states now have an al-
ternate assessment plan in place.
– The federal government funded de-
velopment of two widely used national
alternate assessment models aligned to
educational standards and policy: National
Center and State Collaborative/Multi-State
Alternate Assessment (NCSC/MSAA),
and Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM).
Twenty-seven states explicitly rely on one
of these two systems for their own alternate
assessment program. Both systems are con-
structed around valid and reliable alternate
achievement standards and offer digital,
adaptive technologies to facilitate testing.
– The SANDI presents an important in-
novation in this assessment space by offer-
ing not just an assessment instrument, but
a larger framework for implementing the
assessment effectively and appropriately for
students with significant disabilities.
• As with all assessments, technical qual-
ity is the most important characteristic of
an effective alternate assessment. It can be
difficult to develop technical quality in an
alternate assessment because the population
for an alternate assessment is both small and
diverse. The population size makes it diffi-
cult to follow standard quantitative investi-
gation of validity and reliability, while the
population’s diversity challenges typical as-
sumptions about how to operationalize these
assessment characteristics.
– The SANDI has a demonstrated techni-
cal quality in terms of correlation with other
key alternate assessment instruments, in-
ternal item content validity, and inter-rater
reliability. Students’ SANDI outcomes are
highly and significantly correlated with their
performance on CAPA, WJ and Vineland
assessments. Likewise, the level of inter-
rater agreement is high, denoted by a kappa
28
Leadership
of 0.70 (“substantial agreement”). There is
variation in the level of agreement among
teachers in their ratings of different subject
items, but in general the level of agreement
among teachers is significantly higher than
random agreement. Finally, experts rated
most content area items very highly in terms
of content representativeness, with little
variation among participating scorers.
• Designating a student as eligible for an
alternate assessment is a complex choice that
influences his or her education, as well, be-
cause it allows for a lowering of academic
achievement expectations. Alternate as-
sessments must consider issues of inclusion,
appropriateness, meaning and cultural rele-
vance, so as to maintain as high a standard as
is appropriate for these students. Researchers
consider this a second essential quality to ex-
amine, referred to as “consequential validity.”
• Communication is central to effective
implementation of alternate assessment sys-
tems. Parents, specialists, and other stake-
holders must receive adequate training and
support to advocate effectively for their child
or student. Such collaboration is facilitated
through the IEP development process, and
through professional development opportu-
nities for administrators and teachers.
– The SANDI uses professional learning
communities (PLC) as a central component
of its alternate assessment model to analyze
student data, explicitly led through accom-
panying professional development modules.
Specifically, modules have been developed
and implemented through consistent and
ongoing teacher input, teacher and admin-
istrator training, leadership team and ad-
m inistrative coaching, and feedback cycle.
Each module may be customized depend-
ing on the site staff availability and needs.
To ensure consistent administration of the
SANDI assessment, professional develop-
ment modules are delivered by site-level
leadership teams, and implementation is
supported and monitored by district leader-
ship. All modules are available online 24/7
for review.
Beyond alternate assessment
Hanover results demonstrated to RCOE,
its SANDI users across California districts,
and users across the United States, that the
full value of the SANDI goes beyond that of
other current alternate assessment options to
provide a larger framework for guiding the
kinds of communication and collaboration
that effective alternate assessment requires:
defining appropriate standards, differenti-
ating instruction to meet those standards,
and accurately observing the success of such
efforts in providing students access to those
standards.
The SANDI further supports the big-
ger picture for a district – demonstrating
student progress and educational benefit.
The biggest benefit to districts is providing
the ongoing data required by the Supreme
Court to show growth that is “reasonably
calculated.”
By providing districts, teachers, parents
and students with an assessment system that
measures current, present levels of perfor-
mance and tracks progress of IEP goals for
yearly and triennial IEPs, educational ben-
efit is no longer an opinion, but based in reli-
able and fair data.
And a huge and unexpected benefit of
the SANDI? The building of strong, posi-
tive teacher-parent-school relationships
by providing assessment information in an
organized and meaningful format for all
stakeholders.
Resources
• Federal Code of Regulations, Inclusion
of all students (34/CFR 200.6a): www.law.
cornell.edu/cfr/text/34/200.6.
• Hanover Research, “The Effectiveness
of the Student Annual Needs Determina-
tion Inventory (SANDI) within the Special
Education Context” (2017).
• Flowers, C., Wakeman, S. and Browder,
D. (2009). “Links for Academic Learning
(LAL): A Conceptual Model for Investi-
gating Alignment of Alternate Assessments
Based on Alternate Achievement Stan-
dards.” National Council on Measurement
in Education.
Kate Cahill, M.Ed. and Rebecca Silva,
Ph.D. are educational consultants for
Riverside County Office of Education and
co-authors of the SANDI-FAST. Chun-Wu
Li, Ph.D. is administrator of assessment
and accountability at RCOE.