Utah's Alternate Assessment (UAA) is one of six components of the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS). UAA is designed to assess the achievement of students in grades 1 through 12 with significant cognitive disabilities. It was developed to fulfill two main purposes: (1) To address federal legislative mandates that all students participate in statewide testing in the areas of language arts and math; and (2) To provide valid information that can be used to improve educational outcomes for students with significant cognitive disabilities in Utah's public schools. In order to provide the most valid possible information about student outcomes, UAA includes: (1) Direct observations of student performances; (2) Standardized assessment tasks that are selected based on individual students' needs; (3) Standardized administration procedures that are embedded in naturally occurring routines in natural settings; and (4) Standardized scoring criteria that reflect both mastery and generalization. Any assessment for students with significant cognitive disabilities must address the tension between two demands: individualization and standardization. The population of students who will participate in alternate assessment is highly diverse; it includes students from 1st through 12th grade who have a wide variety of learning needs and whose Individualized Education Programs may be addressing very different skills. This diversity must be recognized in any valid assessment of achievement outcomes for this group of students. So, while the domains of language arts and math must be addressed for all students, the particular skills targeted and how they are tested must be individualized in order to obtain meaningful results for each student. However, in order to make meaningful comparisons, assessment tasks and administration procedures must be standardized. UAA balances these two demands by providing a set of assessment tasks with standardized administration procedures and performance criteria, from which the teacher chooses assessment targets for individual students. This system is designed to provide valid annual assessment of important outcomes for students with significant cognitive disabilities. It is also important to remember that the alternate assessment is just one piece of the overall assessment system and its primary purpose is accountability of the educational system. Thus, in order to best address how well the system is supporting positive educational outcomes for students with significant cognitive disabilities, UAA focuses on the individual student's independent performance of important skills embedded in naturally occurring routines in natural settings. An index to Language Arts Tasks and an index to Math Tasks are included at the end of this report.