Course Instructor Mary Kay Armour

Welcome!

Say the word "test" and some teachers cringe. There are national tests, statewide tests, and system-wide tests to be administered at different times during the school year. Many argue that having to administer so many tests disrupts the work of the school and the teacher. These tests provide data for comparison that result in the labeling of schools as successful or failing, but provide little data about student learning. Standardized testing has a place in the assessment framework, but it shouldn’t limit the types of assessments used to inform educational progress.

Berliner and Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis argue that the reliance on standardized tests does a disservice to students. They suggest that educators need to develop more useful tests — useful in that the tests should provide information to guide and inform learning. Tests need to be "more authentic, performance oriented and locally evaluated." These tests will be radically different from the "herd 'em up, sit 'em down, get 'em going" sort that are the current forms of standardized tests.¹

There are educators in school districts who recognize the need to have a more informative assessment of student learning. Those administrators and teachers are working toward the goal of making assessment meaningful and ensuring that their students can be successful in the 21st century. They are focusing on creating performance assessments that require complex thinking and problem solving skills; assessments that require students to think and communicate their reasoning and to evaluate their own work.

Course Objective

It isn't easy to create a performance assessment task. It takes time, effort, and patience. You write, pilot test, revise, pilot test again, and revise some more. It is a challenge, but well worth the endeavor. You learn. Your fellow educators learn. And, ultimately, your students benefit from the experience.

This course focuses on the purpose of performance assessments and shows you how to develop performance assessment tasks.

In addition to explaining what performance assessment is, this course provides a model to guide you in developing performance assessments that provide meaningful feedback concerning student learning to students, teachers, and parents.

As you proceed through this course, you will

• Define performance assessment.
• Identify a process for developing performance assessments.
• Evaluate performance assessments.

When you complete Designing Performance Assessments, you will have learned how to write performance assessment tasks to evaluate student learning in your classroom. You’ll compare examples of strong and weak assessments to help you critique and revise the tasks you’ve developed. Hopefully, you’ll also discuss what you’ve learned and share your assessment with your fellow educators.

Go to the Table of Contents.