Outlines basic steps to plan and execute effective performance-based assessments. Highlights include defining the purpose; choosing the activity to be assessed, and whether it will be formal or informal; defining the criteria; creating performance rubrics; and assessing the performance by the checklist approach, narrative/anecdotal approach,…

Presents scores teachers assigned to samples of actual students' problem-solving work and rationales teachers provided for these scores which may reflect teachers' values relative to aspects of mathematical problem solving. Concludes that when teachers can express rationales for scoring students' work, they are able to justify their evaluation of…

Discusses extending research into differential item functioning (DIF) to performance assessment and considers some of the best options available at this time. The most effective strategy for assessing DIF is to use a combination of several methods, preferably one from each of the observed score nonparametric, latent score nonparametric, and…

Discusses the ongoing debate among politicians and educators over the relative merits of standardized tests and authentic assessment. (JOW)

Identified methods that six federal agencies reported using to verify and validate performance data used in complying with the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act. Developed a framework containing four major approaches to assessing and improving data quality. (SLD)

Attempted to improve the measurement quality of a complex performance assessment through principled assessment design using the example of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Early Childhood/Generalist examination. All indexes examined improved after revisions were made. Results show the importance of attention to assessment…

Authentic learning activities call for understandable assessments. In this chapter, the process used to involve students in developing an evaluation tool is described. This tool was used by a panel to grade proposal presentations developed in an authentic learning task.

The article deals with the use of rubrics as an assessment tool in the classroom. It is said that teaching elementary music holds many joys but there are serious challenges for new and seasoned teachers including the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act. With limited time to cover music curricula, assessment is often put aside because teachers feel the…

In this article, the author uses the models of accountability outlined in Darling-Hammond's (1989) article as a lens to examine the current climate of educational accountability, particularly the status of professional accountability, and to explore the role of teacher-performance assessment. The question at the core of this exploration is, Are we…

This paper outlines the development, within a small, rural educational psychology service in Wales, of a group consultation approach to service delivery. This involved educational psychologists offering consultation to small groups of teachers as an alternative to direct assessment work. The process of implementing the group consultation approach…

"The Second Century of Ability Testing: Some Predictions and Speculations" did not include predictions about the ability construct or the role of fundamental measurement principles. All commentators raised issues about the nature of the ability construct. The diverse viewpoints represented in these comments highlight well the complexity…

A performance assessment consisting of 10 separate exercises was scored with a randomized scoring procedure. All responses to each exercise were rated once; in addition, a randomly selected subset of the responses to each exercise received an independent second rating. Each second rating was averaged with the corresponding first rating before the…

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether judgments of solo performances recorded at a well-known international piano competition would be affected by musical characteristics such as style (classic period versus early 20th-century Russian) and tempo (slow versus fast). Evaluators rated performances on six test items: tone quality, note…

This year's E-Learn conference has numerous exciting presentations and keynotes. Many speakers will be discussing how education is changing in the forthcoming years. Among them are Dale Stephens who works with the social movement "Uncollege" that empower students to create their own education, Saul Carliner who talks about Massive Online…

The quality of output from a process, to a substantial extent, depends upon quality of the input. The performance of an educational institution badly suffers when it faces a "wear out" in the quality of its in-take. Sometimes it is a deficient induction criterion due to which inappropriate elements hold majority in admitted population of…