"Each year, the special education classroom teachers I work with spend hours preparing to give the alternative test to their students. My students miss their individual speech sessions as I stay in the classroom and the children are taken, one by one, for their individual tests.

"It takes the teachers hours to make or buy the items that are required in order for them to administer the test. The testing takes days and requires at least one assistant, sometimes more, to accomplish each test, since the child is videotaped while he or she moves through the tasks. The amount of time taken to administer the test seems endless.

"On the testing days, the teacher is pulled from the classroom and the children are given substitute activities, which are not as helpful as regularly scheduled activities. It should be noted that the scoring, which is done at the state level, requires a large amount of money and time, as other teachers watch each testing video and score the student's performance. 

"I am left wondering how this can be a productive use of student and teacher time and resources. It seems like we are moving through a process with little purpose.

"Take, for example, one of my nonverbal autistic students who has been evaluated through other means and found to be working at  the level of a high school senior, although he is still of middle-school age.This student, when given the required alternative state test, does nothing but sit and laugh at the camera during the testing situation.

"We have tried hiding the camera to encourage better performance, but he is a bright autistic student and knows that his environment has changed and his response is to sit and laugh. He fails his testing simply because he is out of his classroom routine and cannot function.  

"One test will not tell the academic ability of this student nor the ability of many others. We need to be allowed to measure student performance in a variety of ways if we are truly concerned about accurately measuring any student's performance."

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