In 1990, the California Assessment Collaborative was created to support development and implementation of teacher-designed performance assessments. Four key practices help ensure that assessment serves instruction: articulating standards and assessment design; building teacher capacity for using assessment to improve instruction; building student…

Students find performance-based assessment exciting because the tasks are intriguing and mirror real-life experiences. As this vignette of a middle school interdisciplinary coastal ecology unit shows, hands-on, teacher-made assessments can effectively evaluate students' mastery of process skills such as observing, classifying, inferring,…

Describes an assessment tool called the 4P's (pretest, posttest, portfolio, and performance) designed to assess hands-on science. (ZWH)

Describes the Project on Scope, Sequence, and Coordination of Secondary School Science (SS&C). Discusses the design of a reform in science education, the use of student metaphors and analogies in explaining phenomena, student motivation, and student performance-based assessment in the SS&C project. (MDH)

Examines what is measured by current testing instruments and details the components of a comprehensive assessment system that includes testing and alternative, authentic measures as the basis for judgments about student progress. Types of tests include norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, and performance-based assessments. The more accurate the…

The essential idea of alternative assessment modes is for students to create some product and reflect on it. The authenticity of tasks means using regular classroom instruction as an opportunity for student assessment. Reflective self-evaluation should be an integral part of every classroom assignment, not an obligatory afterthought. Developing…

The five chapters of this report provide resources that deal with the validity, generalizability, comparability, performance standards, and fairness, equity, and bias of performance assessments. The book is written for experienced educational measurement practitioners, although an extensive familiarity with performance assessment is not required.…

Studies of portfolio construction and compilation involving 35 Israeli principals and 14 Dutch managers show that high-quality portfolios can only be expected after sustained use, but that the use of portfolios has an immediate impact on views toward assessment. Portfolios are time-consuming, but can provide effective feedback to the learner. (SLD)

Growing frustration with assessment practices in adapted physical education and confusion with more traditional grading has led to a call for authentic assessment, which measures students' performances in more natural, real-world settings. Within authentic assessment, rubrics provide detailed guidelines for making scoring decisions, offering…

Describes an authentic assessment framework for music educators by summarizing a collaborative project between a music-education professor and a general music teacher at DeWitt Middle School in Ithaca, New York. States that the project shows how an interactive, process-oriented approach to assessing musical understanding is both possible and…

Describes an effective interpretive and collaborative framework that one English teacher has been following for some years. Notes positive feelings about using the framework for assessment, especially summative assessment. Uses criteria which are specific to the task purpose and task audience. Notes that tasks are non-directed. (PA)

California holds special-education students accountable for statewide assessments, district content and performance standards, and the general-education core curriculum. Key performance indicators provide concrete data to the state and help schools demonstrate whether all their students are achieving. The Centralia District's reading…

Discusses the need for preservice teacher competencies in technology and describes the development of performance-based technology competencies at the University of Northern Iowa that were based on several national standards documents. Highlights include equipment operation, supporting information literacy, and technology integration in specific…

Studied the relationship between reliability and assessment cost using two empirical examples to show that more than one combination of sources of error may result in a desired generalizability coefficient, and that it is possible to increase the number of observations while decreasing cost. The studies involved 50 undergraduates studying…

Contends that the development of a new wave of computers, some characterized by small size and portability and others noted for powerful capabilities to record and edit electronically stored motion pictures, suggests a wide range of applications of these new technologies to the teaching and administration of performance-based communication…