This paper presents an overview of New Hampshire's efforts to implement a pilot accountability system designed to support deeper learning for students and powerful organization change for schools and districts. The accountability pilot, referred to as Performance Assessment of Competency Education or PACE, is grounded in a competencybased…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December 2015, is the latest reauthorization of one of the most influential pieces of federal education legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The law had not been reauthorized since 2001 when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed, and ESSA is the result of…

In the opening paper in this Special Edition I outlined the major issues that led to the establishment of "project e-scape". The project was intended to develop systems and approaches that enabled learners to build real-time web-based portfolios of their performance (initially) in design & technology and additionally to build systems…

Most innovations have contextual pre-cursors that prompt new ways of thinking and in their turn help to give form to the new reality. This was the case with the e-scape software development process. The origins of the system existed in software components and ideas that we had developed through previous projects, but the ultimate direction we took…

Educational performance based on the learning outcomes of formal schooling in a future knowledge society could be significantly different from that of today. This study investigates the possibilities of developing an educational performance indicator for new-millennium learners (NMLs). The researchers conducted literature reviews, a meeting of…

The perspectives of graduates offer a valuable source of understanding for educators and policy-makers on how to ensure high quality educational pathways that prepare all students for work and college. Based on in-depth interviews with graduates from three Boston Public Schools with well-established performance-based assessment systems, the study…

The number of performance-based assessments is increasing rapidly, but to date there is no established procedure for setting standards on these assessments. This paper describes several extensions to the Angoff procedure to accommodate the characteristics of a performance-based assessment and presents the results of research in applying this…

The New Standards Project is a partnership of 17 states and 6 major school districts that have joined to develop alternative approaches to setting educational standards and assessing student achievement. In the New Standards Project plan, formal standard setting occurs through a process of public examination of student work products on pilot…

A theory of portfolio assembly is presented and used to guide analysis of portfolios. Features of a portfolio evaluation approach known as the Cognitive Model for Assessing Portfolios (CMAP) are outlined. This model assumes that portfolios begin as relatively simple collections and gradually grow into complex, articulate stories of knowing. It is…

The New Standards Project conducted a pilot test of a series of performance-based assessment tasks in mathematics and English language arts at Grades 4 and 8 in the spring of 1993. This paper reports the results of a series of generalizability analyses conducted for a subset of the 1993 pilot study data in mathematics. Generalizability analyses…

Setting standards on performance measures is discussed in the context of the State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) initiative supported by the Council of Chief State School Offices. The usual item-based methods for standard setting, the methods developed by Nedelsky (1954), Angoff (1971), and Ebel (1972), were developed…

In 1991 the School District of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) invited elementary and middle schools to participate in a pilot project to develop and implement portfolio and performance-based assessments. Twenty-five schools began work in winter 1992. Research for Better Schools, Inc. analyzed the progress reports submitted by the schools. The…

Initial efforts to validate a developmentally appropriate assessment system for use with children aged 3 to 7 years are described. The Project Construct Assessment System is part of a comprehensive framework for curriculum and assessment that is predicated on the theory that children construct their own knowledge. It features a variety of…

The California Assessment Collaborative (CAC) was designed as a three-year effort to identify, validate, and disseminate alternatives to standardized testing throughout the state. This report highlights the results from the first year and comments on the work of 22 diverse pilot projects that serve as examples of site-based development of…

Connecticut is developing a new grade 10 statewide testing program known as the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT). The CAPT reflects the changing nature of standardized assessment by using a variety of assessment formats including performance tasks, open-ended questions, and multiple-choice tests. This paper describes the research that…