• The NCSC project will identify a promising new alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards, balancing flexibility and standardization, working closely with teachers, content, and assessment design experts.

  • The NCSC project will contribute to definitions of what college and career ready means for students with significant cognitive disabilities, building understanding of high expectations for these students.

  • In addition to the alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards, NCSC will develop curriculum and instruction materials to support the implementation of the summative assessment disseminated through each state’s professional development communities of practice.

  • NCSC will contribute to better understanding of the learning characteristics of all students, and how to translate that information into an assessment system that minimizes barriers to participation.

Welcome to the National Center and State Collaborative!

The National Center and State Collaborative (NCSC) is a project led by five centers and 27 states (16 core states and 11 Tier II states) to build an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. The goal of the NCSC project is to ensure that students with the most significant cognitive disabilities achieve increasingly higher academic outcomes and leave high school ready for post-secondary options. More

News From The Field

The Indiana Department of Education is working closely with Project Success, an Indiana Special Education Resource Network member, as well as our NCSC project liaison to disseminate the mathematics curriculum and instructional materials developed by the NCSC project. Currently these materials are being used to add supports and adaptations for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities to grade level mathematics lessons based on general education standards. The NCSC mathematics curriculum and instructional materials are also the basis for training Professional Development writers/presenters who will be involved in six statewide regional workshops this summer. More