Assessment Details

The Virginia Alternate Assessment Program (VAAP) is designed to evaluate the performance of students with significant cognitive disabilities in grades 3-8 and high school. Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, the portfolio-based VAAP was replaced with a new multiple-choice assessment in the content areas of reading, mathematics, and science that was administered to students in an online or paper format. 

The new VAAP is based on academic content standards derived from the Standards of Learning (SOL) in reading, mathematics, and science that have been reduced in depth, breadth, and complexity.  These content standards are referred to as the Virginia Essentialized Standards of Learning (VESOL).

The assessments measure foundational skills required for success in the workplace and help measure the workplace skills that can affect job performance. WorkKeys assessments are:

• Relevant: WorkKeys® assessments are developed to solve actual workplace problems. Unlike other assessments, they don’t simply give an indication of reading and writing competency. Instead, they measure a range of hard and soft skills relevant to any occupation, at any level, and across industries.
• Recognized: Successful completion of WorkKeys core assessments can lead to earning an ACT WorkKeys® National Career Readiness Certificate™ (ACT WorkKeys NCRC®) — a credential that verifies the skills found to be most essential across industries and occupations.

The Workplace Documents Assessment

The Workplace Documents assessment measures skills that individuals use when they read real workplace documents and use that information to make job-related decisions and solve problems. The documents include messages, emails, letters, directions, signs, bulletins, policies, websites, contracts, and regulations.

The Business Writing Assessment

Workplace writing needs to be clear and free of distractions such as poor grammar, misspellings, and extraneous information. After all, careless errors may lead the reader to believe there are also errors in the facts, and the writer loses credibility and trustworthiness.

The Business Writing assessment measures the skill used when writing an original response to a work-related situation. Components of the Business Writing skill include sentence structure, mechanics, grammar, word usage, tone and word choice, organization and focus, and development of ideas.

The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) is a standardized test designed to measure learned reasoning and problem­ solving skills in three different areas: verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal. These abilities, acquired both in and out of school, are important because children use them on a daily basis to learn and solve problems. It is important to note that the CogAT is neither an intelligence test nor an achievement test. It measures developed rather than innate abilities.

Teachers use Cognitive Abilities Test results to tailor instruction to match how students learn, consider students for enrichment programs that pique their interest and challenge their thinking, and uncover gaps between student achievement and ability.

Informational links:

Understand scoring

Local Alternative Assessments, including Performance Assessments, are used in place of SOL tests in certain grade level content areas to support balanced assessment practices as part of the Virginia Assessment Program for grades 3, 5, 6, and 7.

The 2014 General Assembly omitted five Standards of Learning (SOL) tests in grades 3, 5, 6, and 7. The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) still requires school divisions to continue to teach and measure student achievement of all content standards. The LAAs are required for grade-level content areas in which Virginia SOL tests were eliminated and are created locally by Roanoke City School District.

LAAs are used to fulfill state requirements for annual performance and progress monitoring in the following grade level content areas:

• Grade 3 History
• Grade 3 Science
• Grade 5 Writing
• Grade 6 U.S. History I
• Grade 7 U.S. History II

A Performance Assessment requires students to perform a task or create a product and is scored using a Virginia Department of Education rubric.

Performance Assessments are structured to be culturally responsive, student-centered learning and equity by:

• Providing learners creative ways to demonstrate learning
• Tasks that measure subject-matter proficiency
• It is part of the learning process
• Supporting learners with diverse needs
• Requires students to apply the content and skills they have learned
• Students have an opportunity to demonstrate achievement of the "Five C's" – critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, and contribution  – described in the VDOE’s Profile of a Graduate.

State Rubrics for Scoring Performance Assessments

To provide consistent achievement expectations for all Virginia students, school divisions are to use the common rubrics. The rubrics are linked below in each content-specific section, when scoring student responses to performance assessments or performance tasks included among the local alternative assessments in these courses.

• Grade 3 Science
• Grade 3 Social Studies
• Grade 5 Writing
• Grade 6 U.S. History I
• Grade 7 U.S. History II

For our Families

• LAAs measure student learning of the grade level content standards within classroom instruction throughout the school year.
• Families do not receive a numerical score as they would for an SOL test.
• Students participate in PAs as part of the LAA, aligned to the grade level content area. 
• Information and timeframe about PAs is communicated by the teacher/school.
• Final score reports will be placed in ParentVUE.