Through guidance provided by the Maine Department of Education, school systems will locally select, adapt or develop entries for Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolios (PAAP) for any student who cannot participate in the Maine Education Assessment (MEA) or district wide assessments. The very few students who would require this alternate form of assessment would be individuals who need accommodations that are so significant that content validity of the MEA or district-wide assessments would be compromised. The majority of students who will be eligible for alternate assessments will be students who have Individual Education Plans (IEPs) that address their special education needs. There will be a few students who do not qualify for special education services, but receive other supplemental services (ex. English as a Second Language and Section 504) who will also require alternate assessments.

The State will provide guidance in the form of frameworks, lists of options, rubrics, policies, decision-making flowcharts, etc. All of the information provided to local systems will build on the purposes and characteristics of Maine's Comprehensive Assessment System and will lead to the assessment of the Maine Learning Results Guiding Principles through the content areas. Connections to other state level initiatives such as the Maine Assessment Portfolio Project will be core to the work.

As part of their local comprehensive assessment system, districts will ensure that all of their students are being assessed toward achievement of the Learning Results. For those few students who do not participate in the MEA, Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolios will be created with each of the individual entries scored locally using valid scoring tools. Districts will have the year in which the MEA is administered to gather the evidence for the portfolio and do the local scoring. (The year in which the child is in the 4th, 8th or 11th grade)

Districts will bring these Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolios to one of four regional sites to be regionally scored for inter-rater reliability of the entries and then for a standards review of the entire body of work. The performance levels used will be the same as the four levels used for the MEA: Exceeds the Standard, Meets the Standard, Partially Meets the Standard, and Does Not Meet the Standard. This work will be done by cross-disciplinary groups of local district staff in the spring of the year. Student portfolio performance levels will then be reported to the State to be included in that districts accountability data. To ensure equity across the state, a network of leaders who have had common training and have common procedures will facilitate regional events. Through this process, all students should either participate in the MEA (with or without accommodations) or participate in the PAAP resulting in every student being reflected in the districts scores.

To ensure the PAAP meets the needs of students and educators in Maine, it was piloted during the 2000-2001 school year. Changes based on the pilot research were made and the revised version will be implemented statewide starting in the fall of 2001. The first two years of implementation (2001-2003) will generate baseline data and provide educators and parents with numerous opportunities for training and technical assistance. Aligned with other Learning Results legislated timelines, full implementation of the PAAP, leading to the inclusion of all students in one accountability system, will occur in 2003-2004.