With federal regulations requiring Adequate Yearly Progress reports from state departments of education each year to ensure that no students are falling through the cracks, assessment has become one of the hottest issues across the country in schools, state governments, and universities. Recently, Steve Elliott of Vanderbilt spearheaded The Consortium for Alternate Assessment Validity and Experimental Studies (CAAVES) to investigate validity issues related to the alternate assessments of seven states: Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Also involved is a company called ThinkLink Learning, which specializes in generating formative assessments for K-12 students. ThinkLink was founded by Vanderbilt in 2000.
The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to administer statewide assessments to all students, even those with the most significant cognitive disabilities. The assessments must yield data that is valid and reliable, reflecting the extent of a student’s achievement during the course of a school year. CAAVES is arguably the largest study to date to investigate the complex issues related to the development and evaluation of these alternate assessments.
The members of CAAVES first convened on December 11-12 in the Wyatt Center at Vanderbilt. Primarily, the meeting was dedicated to bringing the major players together and discussing the strategic issues related to conducting a study of this magnitude over the next 4-5 months. During those two days, I was surrounded by dedicated scholars from all over the country, and in the short time they had together, much was accomplished.
This is a wonderful learning opportunity for me as a student. I’ll be sure to post progress reports over the next few months (the next meeting is in June) to let you know how the CAAVES project is going.
- Peter Beddow
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