Effective school leadership is key to students' academic success. But the development of effective school leadership has been seriously hampered by the lack of technically sound tools to assess and monitor leaders' performance. With support from The Wallace Foundation, a team from Vanderbilt has been developing such an assessment system, and this…

Examines the fundamental characteristics of and reviews empirical research on performance assessment of diverse groups of students, including those with mild disabilities. Discussion of the technical qualities of performance assessment and barriers to its advancement leads to the conclusion that performance assessment should play a supplementary…