Dynamic Learning Maps
Dynamic Learning Maps® (DLM®) assessments are for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities for whom general state assessments are not appropriate, even with accommodations. DLM assessments offer these students a way to show what they know and can do in English language arts, mathematics, and science.
DLM assessments also help parents and educators set high academic expectations for their students. Results from DLM assessments are used to inform instruction and meet accountability requirements for reporting student achievement.
Dynamic Learning Maps assessments are developed using a cyclical, multi-step process. The assessments are delivered as “testlets” – short, instructionally relevant groups of items that share a common context. DLM testlets are developed using principles of evidence-centered design by subject-matter experts with additional expertise in instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities.
The DLM Alternate Assessment System helps educators facilitate student success. The system illustrates the relationship among the knowledge, skills, and understandings needed to meet academic content standards in a learning map model. The learning map model plots out individual concepts in nodes. The connections among these nodes show the multiple ways that students’ knowledge, skills, and understandings develop over time.
DLM assessments are delivered online in Kite® Suite. Two models of the assessment are available: Instructionally Embedded (IE) or Year-End (YE). A state decides which model will be used in addition to which subjects and grades will be assessed. The assessment for both models and all subjects is made up of a set of short assessments called testlets.