Pearson's Learning Foundations describe the optimal conditions for learning and reflect the learner experience Pearson hopes their products will create. Pearson does this by incorporating the Learning Design Principles. Each of the Learning Design Principles goes into detail about a key principle, supporting product design and marketing by…

Summative assessments measure students' mastery of grade-level academic standards and skills in specific content areas after learning. State summative assessment systems provide students and families, school and district leaders, and state policymakers with valuable data to help understand student progress and school quality. This Policy Guide…

A broad view of assessment development and design procedures portrays existing theories and methodologies as not fully representative of the knowledge, skills, and abilities students need to perform in the 21st century. Acknowledgement of these inadequacies has led to developments in assessment research attempting to meet contemporary expectations…

The authors address considerations and promising practices relating to assessment of d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Multilingual Learners. DMLs' unique culture(s), language(s), and learning needs must be considered when assessments of this population are being planned, conducted, and interpreted. The authors address theory and research on (a) general…

This article describes how The Language Center at the Espirito Santo Federal University changed from using traditional pencil-andpaper tests to performance testing, based on authentic tasks. The change was prompted because people thought that their testing did not reflect a communicative approach to language teaching. The Assessment Project lasted…

Task-based language assessment (TBLA) grows from the observation that mastering the grammar and lexicon of a language is not sufficient for using a language to achieve ends in social situations. In TBLA, language use is observed in settings that are more realistic and complex than in discrete skills assessment and that typically require the…

In this article, we will first focus on how starting from the stakeholders' needs has led to the construction of examinations based on a theory of functional language performance assessment in which, not general, but domain-specific language use plays a central role. Second, we will describe how we aim to infer real-life performance on the basis…

Ensuring that language tests for adult English language learners are appropriate, valid, and reliable is a challenge. Performance-based assessments are complex to develop and implement. Yet, because the focus of assessment, both in the National Reporting System for Adult Education (NRS) descriptors and in the Department of Education's definition…

This article presents a model of formative task-based language assessment implemented in the Chinese language program at the University of Iowa. The model was conceptualized from both empirical evidence, namely previous research done by other team members and me, and assessment theory, namely task-based learning and testing. Our formative…

The purpose of this paper is to review the theoretical and empirical literature relevant to language performance assessment. Following a definition of performance assessment, this paper considers: (1) theoretical assumptions underlying performance assessment; (2) purposes of performance assessment; (3) performance assessment procedures; (4) merits…

Performance assessment procedures and a portfolio assessment framework are presented for monitoring the language development of language minority students in the upper elementary and middle grades. Unlike standardized achievement tests, performance-based assessment can effectively monitor the progress of language minority students because it can…