As states, districts, and schools plan to return for the 2021-22 school year, questions are raised about whether and how to test children with disabilities, including children with the most significant cognitive disabilities and English learners with disabilities. This FAQ addresses some common questions and provides links to useful resources.

No one can dispute that tests should measure important content, and for many (but not all) purposes, tests should be aligned with curricular goals. Thus in many cases, alignment is clearly better than the alternative, and nothing that follows here argues otherwise. Unfortunately, however, this does not imply that alignment is sufficient protection…

California has provided other states with an example of how not to assess student writing and has initiated a new direction in the statewide assessment of student writing achievement, a direction designed to influence writing instruction positively. Before 1987, the California Assessment Program (CAP) limited English skills assessment to multiple…