Pacific Assessment Consortium

GSEG II: American Samoa

American Samoa’s Implementation Project provides the technical support for the Pacific Basin entity of American Samoa to improve its capacity for accurately reporting on the performance and participation of students with disabilities in the entity's state-wide assessment system.

The overall Project outcome is to improve American Samoa’s capacity to accurately report on the performance and participation of students with disabilities in the State assessment system. This outcome will be met through the following goals:

1. To develop and implement assessment accommodation guidelines and appropriate training materials through a stakeholder process involving review of research, assessment content, and informed judgment to identify accommodations that reflect current knowledge and best practice for producing valid measures of the grade-level content, as well as modifications that might be needed by some students with disabilities;
   
   
2. To improve upon the implementation of high quality alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards through a stakeholder process to articulate and clarify the linkage of the alternate achievement standards to enrolled grade-level content standards;
   
   
3. To develop an evaluation toolkit for the implementation of the developed
   assessment accommodation guidelines and training materials and the alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards to determine the effectiveness of ensuring participation and performance of students with disabilities in the State assessment system, while maintaining the validity and reliability for the purposes for which the assessment is used; and
   
   
4. To establish a mechanism for ongoing communication and technical support during and beyond the one-year Project to ensure sustainable and effective mechanisms for accurately measuring and reporting the participation and performance of students with disabilities in the assessment system.
   
   
   

Jurisdiction Liaison

Moeolo Vaatausili
Assistant Director, American Samoa Dept. of Special Education
Tel: 671.735.2494
Fax: 671.734.5709
mvaatausili@yahoo.com