Education Commons^™

Performance-Based Assessment: Lessons Learned From Leading School Districts, John Seyfarth

MERC Publications

There is a strong sentiment among educators in the United States to change traditional methods of measuring student achievement. Many of those who favor such a change advocate the adoption of performance assessment. This project examines practices in three school districts that are recognized as leaders in the development and implementation of performance assessment programs in schools. Data were collected by interviews with district administrators and from documents. The finds of the study are presented in this report.

Performance assessment refers to a process for appraising learning that requires students to perform tasks designed for the purpose of demonstrating specified …

Performance-Based Assessment: Questions And Answers, John T. Seyfarth

MERC Publications

A number of states, schools and school districts are engaged in efforts to develop and implement new forms of assessment. These efforts are known by several names. Performance assessment, the term used in this paper, refers to tasks that require students to construct responses or take actions to demonstrate specified knowledge or skills. Performance assessment tasks appear in a variety of formats ranging from open-ended questions to demonstrations of skills or comprehensive collections of bodies of work over time. The tasks focus on higher order skills are non-routine and are sometimes loosely structured. Students may be called upon to make, …