Debate about the levels-setting process for criterion-referenced tests of achievement is reviewed. An alternative framework is proposed for conceptualizing the problem and practice of setting performance standards on such tests. Standard setting is reconceptualized as the development, description, and implementation of reasonable rules for…

Current successes and failures in U.S. educational measurement are reviewed, focusing on criterion-referenced testing. Pluses and minuses are listed for the following: (1) the move toward authentic assessment; (2) the dominance of criterion-referenced assessment; and (3) item response theory applications. Each area is a double-edged sword. (SLD)

First step toward creating staff interest in and capacity for change is realizing things could be wrong. Second is recognizing growth-inhibiting factors, such as narrow job and role definitions, evasion of responsibility, focus on events instead of long-term patterns, intellectual isolation and quick fixes, and structural fragmentation. True…

This article reconceptualizes performance as a generative metaphor for educational research based on theoretical and methodological points of contact between instructional communication and performance studies. Asking which aspects of educational experience are open to performance-centered research, it considers new research agendas. (SLD)

The continuous method of scoring a performance test composed of standardized patients was compared with a derivative method that assigned each of the 131 examinees (medical residents) a dichotomous score, and use of Angoff's method with these scoring methods was studied. Both methods produce reasonable means and distributions of scores. (SLD)

Evidence is presented on the generalizability and convergent validity of performance assessments using data from six studies of student achievement that sampled a wide range of measurement facets and methods. Results at individual and school levels indicate that task-sampling variability is the major source of measurement error. (SLD)

Describes the development of a systemwide institutional effectiveness assessment model in the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS). Indicates that a primary goal of WTCS was to provide a measure that could assess systemwide effectiveness while preserving the autonomy of each individual college. Identifies four categories of effectiveness:…

Drawing on the experience of Oregon's new-teacher evaluation system, describes teacher work-sample methodology and evidence for its reliability and validity in evaluating the performance of prospective teachers. This is a methodology that responds to the challenge issued by the National Commission on Teaching and the America's Future challenge.…

Through workshops, seminars, training programs, and conferences, the nonprofit Center on Learning, Assessment, and School Structure (CLASS) helps educators in public and private schools develop more credible and authentic assessments and curricula. The Center's head, Grant Wiggins, argues that schools should have standards--but the standards…

Researchers have found three consistent effects of stressing letter or number grades. Grades reduce students' interest in learning, preference for challenging tasks, and thinking quality. Grades distort curriculum, waste time, encourage cheating, and spoil interpersonal relationships. Invisible grading is a compromise. Authentic assessment opens…

Places performance assessment in the context of high-stakes uses, describes underlying technologies, and outlines the history of performance testing from 210 B.C.E. to the present. Historical issues of fairness, efficiency, cost, and infrastructure influence contemporary efforts to use performance assessments in large-scale, high-stakes testing…

Describes evaluation and assessment tools that have been devised by one institution as practical and informative ways to report students' results. (Author/VWL)

Provides a rationale for using developmental portfolios in preservice teacher education, describing how portfolios have been used in teacher education programs and discussing contributions portfolios can make in helping candidates reflect on the pre-student teaching segment of the program and make the transition from student to student teacher and…

Illustrates how studying fourth-grade students' language-play response discourses and sharing students' patterns of thinking with them can lead to authentic assessment that fuels learning. Discusses open activities (providing challenge, autonomy, and social collaboration) that foster language-play response. Discusses what is meant by language…

Examined the generalizability of written-response scores on the English 30 diploma examination administered to Alberta 12th-grade students. Student scores differed as a function of rater, but this variance component was small across two tasks and two administrations; score generalizability was high using a two-rater system; and scale variability…