Developing and Implementing Classroom Performance Assessments for Learning

• In Event: Genres of Formative Assessment

Abstract

States are revising their assessment and accountability systems to include both standardized tests of content knowledge and rigorous classroom performance assessments. A balanced assessment system supports the development of a challenging, relevant and rigorous curriculum benchmarked to national (common core) standards of performance, and promotes improvements in instructional practice and enriches students’ learning experiences in ways that lead to higher levels of student achievement. Curriculum-embedded performance assessments provide evidenced-based information about students’ strengths and weaknesses, allowing teachers to give specific feedback and assisting students in revising and improving their performance (Black and Wiliam, 1998). Students’ performances offer teachers a window into students’ problem solving strategies, analytic reasoning capabilities, and content knowledge. Teachers use this vital information to guide and differentiate instruction to support students’ learning (Lane, 2010). Performance tasks, which include clear criteria and rubrics, engage students in the assessment process, clarify the standards for a quality performance, and provide opportunities for students to monitor their learning (Darling Hammond, 2010).
SCALE develops and pilots curriculum-embedded performance assessments to measure and promote students’ learning of content and skills. Performance assessments are complex, open-ended tasks requiring students to go beyond regurgitation to demonstrate their thinking by applying their content understandings. These rich discipline-specific, standardized tasks provide varying levels of flexibility for schools/teachers to adapt the content to better align with school curriculum and student needs. While standardized across classrooms, teachers have individual discretion about how to implement the performance tasks. Teachers receive guidelines about the appropriate level of supports, instructional scaffolds, and feedback to provide to students without decreasing the rigor and challenge of the tasks.
The task design scaffolds students' learning toward completion of the final task through the production of interim work products and collaboration with peers to learn from one another. These features provide students with opportunities to get immediate feedback from teachers and peers, and for teachers to make adjustments to their instruction based on early drafts of students' work.
Prior to implementation, teachers learn about the tasks, understand the expected learning outcomes, and how to best scaffold the task to meet their students’ needs. Teachers introduce the rubric to students so they know how to assess their work in advance.
Teachers reliably score student work using a standard protocol and common scoring standard. Using a content-specific rubric allows teachers to provide detailed feedback to students about their performance, to make evidence-based judgments of student learning, and data-based decisions about their instructional practice. The rubric enables teachers to track students’ progress along the same dimensions and to compare students’ performance across classrooms and schools. Following scorer training, teachers analyze student work and reflect on their instructional practices as well as revisions for future task implementation.
In this symposium, SCALE will report on design lessons learned from a range of task types and complexities, as well as impacts of implementing performance tasks on instructional practice and opportunities for students to receive feedback on their learning.

Author

• Susan E. Schultz, Stanford University