Performance Assessment
What is a Performance Assessment?
• An assessment in which the teacher observes and makes a judgment about the student's competency in some completed product
o Although your text includes presentations (i.e. singing, debates, speeches) under the heading of performance assessment for our purposes these types of performances will be considered to be formal observational assessments
• Some textbook and test publishers use the term for any type of constructed response items (i.e. short answer, essay, etc.). We will NOT be considering any type of constructed response item to be a performance assessment.
• Your text distinguishes between alternative assessment (any assessment other than traditional paper and pencil types of assesement), authentic assessment (an assessment that evaluates a student's ability to use knowledge to perform a task similar to what one would encounter in real life or the real world) , and performance assessment. For our purposes, the more authentic a performance assessment is, the better it is.
Characteristics of Performance Assessments
• Students must create, construct, or produce some product.
• Deep understanding and/or reasoning skills are needed and are assessed.
• Takes a longer amount of time to complete, often more than one day and sometimes even weeks.
• Requires students to explain, justify, and defend.
• Involves engaging ideas of importance and substance.
• Typically there is no single "correct" answer
• Typically, the product is grounded in real world contexts and constraints.
• The emphasis in on what students will do, as opposed to what they will remember.
• Make public scoring criteria and standards.
Strengths and Limitations of Performance Assessments
Strengths
• The major benefit of performance assessment is its direct link to instruction.
• This type of assessment integrates instruction better than any of the traditional paper and pencil types of assessment.
• Learning occurs while students complete the task.
• Teachers interact with students as they complete the task, providing feedback that helps students learn.
• These types of assessments are tied to real-world challenges and situations.
• Students value the task because it is not superficial, is active rather than passive, and is engaging, rather than uninteresting.
• These types of assessment are well suited to constructivist learning theories.
• These types of assessments are well suited to assessing deeper understanding and reasoning.
Limitations
• Reliability: Because scoring involves professional judgment there will be variations and error due to bias and other factors. Consistency across scorers (one type of measurement error) is difficult to achieve. We will discuss how to minimize this type of error and create systematic scoring procedures next class.
• Sampling: There are usually few samples per student and inconsistent student performance also contributes to error.
• Time: These types of assessments are time intensive. It is time consuming to create good tasks and develop good scoring criteria and rubrics. It is also time consuming for students to complete the task and for teachers to evaluate the final product.