Alternative Academic Assessment

Alternative academic assessment (AAA) is a class of procedures that are commonly used to assess student progress within the context of the curriculum to inform instruction. AAA is described as alternative because the measurement approaches are often used as an alternative to published norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests. The latter types of published tests dominated the measurement of academic achievement and aptitude for most of the past 100 years. AAA emerged within the past 30 years as a potential supplement or replacement for more traditional procedures and instruments (e.g., Iowa Test of Basic Skills, Wechsler Individualized Achievement Test).

Many AAA procedures can also be described as performance-based assessments or curriculum-based assessments (CBAs). These types of assessments typically rely on task demands and responses that are substantially similar ...