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Authentic Ways to Develop Performance-Based Activities

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Authentic Ways to Develop Performance-Based Activities

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This article speaks to six different types of performance based  assessments. It is interesting for me to think about how each type would translate in the elementary classroom. I appreciated the attention given to the importance of integrating and meeting 21st Century expectations whenever possible:
https://www.thoughtco.com/ideas-for-performance-based-activities-7686

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Performance-based learning is when students participate in performing tasks or activities that are meaningful and engaging. The purpose of this kind of learning is to help students acquire and apply knowledge, practice skills, and develop independent and collaborative work habits. The culminating activity or product for performance-based learning is one that lets a student demonstrate evidence of understanding through a transfer of skills.

A performance-based assessment is open-ended and without a single, correct answer, and it should demonstrate authentic learning, such as the creation of a newspaper or class debate. The benefit of performance-based assessments is that students who are more actively involved in the learning process absorb and understand the material at a much deeper level. Other characteristics of performance-based assessments are that they are complex and time-bound.

Also, there are learning standards in each discipline that set academic expectations and define what is proficient in meeting that standard. Performance-based activities can integrate two or more subjects and should also meet 21st Century expectations whenever possible:

There are also Information Literacy standards and Media Literacy standards that require performance-based learning.

Clear Expectations

Performance-based activities can be challenging for students to complete. They need to understand from the beginning exactly what is being asked of them and how they will be assessed.

Examples and models may help, but it is more important to provide detailed criteria that will be used to assess the performance-based assessment. All criteria should be addressed in a scoring rubric.

Observations are an important component and can be used to provide students with feedback to improve performance. Teachers and students can both use observations. There may be peer to peer student feedback. There could be a checklist or a tally to record student achievement.

The goal of performance-based learning should be to enhance what the students have learned, not just have them recall facts. The following six types of activities provide good starting points for assessments in performance-based learning.

Presentations

One easy way to have students complete a performance-based activity is to have them do a presentation or report of some kind. This activity could be done by students, which takes time, or in collaborative groups.

The basis for the presentation may be one of the following:

Providing information

Teaching a skill

Reporting progress

Persuading others

Students may choose to add in visual aids or a PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides to help illustrate elements in their speech. Presentations work well across the curriculum as long as there is a clear set of expectations for students to work with from the beginning.

Portfolios

Student portfolios can include items that students have created and collected over a period. Art portfolios are for students who want to apply to art programs in college.

Another example is when students create a portfolio of their written work that shows how they have progressed from the beginning to the end of class. The writing in a portfolio can be from any discipline or a combination of disciplines.

Some teachers have students select those items they feel represents their best work to be included in a portfolio. The benefit of an activity like this is that it is something that grows over time and is therefore not just completed and forgotten. A portfolio can provide students with a lasting selection of artifacts that they can use later in their academic career.

Reflections may be included in student portfolios in which students may make a note of their growth based on the materials in the portfolio.

Performances

Dramatic performances are one kind of collaborative activities that can be used as a performance-based assessment. Students can create, perform, and/or provide a critical response. Examples include dance, recital, dramatic enactment. There may be prose or poetry interpretation.

This form of performance-based assessment can take time, so there must be a clear pacing guide.

Students must be provided time to address the demands of the activity; resources must be readily available and meet all safety standards. Students should have opportunities to draft stage work and practice.

Developing the criteria and the rubric and sharing these with students before evaluating a dramatic performance is critical.

Projects are commonly used by teachers as performance-based activities. They can include everything from research papers to artistic representations of information learned. Projects may require students to apply their knowledge and skills while completing the assigned task. They can be aligned with the higher levels of creativity, analysis, and synthesis.

Students might be asked to complete reports, diagrams, and maps. Teachers can also choose to have students work individually or in groups.

Journals may be part of a performance-based assessment. Journals can be used to record student reflections. Teachers may require students to complete journal entries. Some teachers may use journals as a way to record participation.

Exhibits and Fairs

Teachers can expand the idea of performance-based activities by creating exhibits or fairs for students to display their work. Examples include things like history fairs to art exhibitions. Students work on a product or item that will be exhibited publicly.

Exhibitions show in-depth learning and may include feedback from viewers.

In some cases, students might be required to explain or defend their work to those attending the exhibition.

Some fairs like science fairs could include the possibility of prizes and awards.

A debate in the classroom is one form of performance-based learning that teaches students about varied viewpoints and opinions. Skills associated with debate include research, media and argument literacy, reading comprehension, evidence evaluation, public speaking, and civic skills.

There are many different formats for debate. One is the fishbowl debate in which a handful of students form a half circle facing the other students and debate a topic. The rest of the classmates may pose questions to the panel.

Another form is a mock trial where teams representing the prosecution and defense take on the roles of attorneys and witnesses. A judge, or judging panel, oversees the courtroom presentation.

Middle school and high schools can use debates in the classroom, with increased levels of sophistication by grade level.

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Great Ideas for Performance-Based Activities

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These six kinds of authentic performance-based activities allow students to apply knowledge, practice skills, and develop independent work habits.

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Now That Schools Are Promoting Broader Definitions of Success, How Do We Measure Progress?

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Now That Schools Are Promoting Broader Definitions of Success, How Do We Measure Progress?

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This article resonated with me especially with the increased  awareness and emphasis on socio-emotional learning and how it effects academic progress.
Although the article does not answer this question specifically, it does address the need for conversation for what is happening in our classrooms with our learners is not always equally representaive on our current models of assessment.

https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/02/now-that-schools-are-promoting-broader-definitions-of-success-how-do-we-measure-progress/

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As more schools adopt learning goals beyond reading, writing and math, certain questions are vexing school leaders worldwide: How can we measure growth in creative thinking? How can we spot a "self-aware" team member? How can we measure whether our graduating high school seniors have the habits necessary to succeed at college and throughout adult life?

The good news is that leading grantmakers have defined new goals for students, including the XQ Learner Goals, the Hewlett Foundation's Deeper Learning outcomes, and MyWays from NGLC. Battelle for Kids also has a roadmap for schools to develop new graduate profiles.

Beyond the philanthropy sector, education leaders are also puzzling over how to encourage and monitor growth in important career and citizenship skills. For instance, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) is proactively updating its approach to authorizing and monitoring charter schools. "We're thinking through how we encourage and measure social-emotional learning, citizenship, and critical thinking", said David Frank (@dfranknyc), the Executive Director of the NYSED Charter School Office (CS) in Albany.

"We're really interested in fostering the development of New Yorkers who are not only great at reading and math but also have a zest for learning, who can grow, thrive, and stand up for a set of values that they deeply nurture and explore. We want to encourage children to have a healthy sense of confidence in learning and don't shy away from expressing their values and beliefs. We want to encourage schools to allow students to be creative thinkers and love learning but it's a very hard metric to measure", Frank added.

With the help of a generous federal grant, Frank and his team are supporting the creation and expansion of high-quality charter schools in New York state that support both strong academic and socio-emotional outcomes for at-risk students while at the same time improving charter school authorizing practices in New York and beyond. The NYSED CSO is also part of a National Best Practice Dissemination Grant led by the National Charter School Institute to share cutting-edge approaches to measuring non-academic contributors to positive developmental outcomes in children with other leading charter authorizers including SUNY Charter Schools Institute, Central Michigan University, Chicago Public Schools, Hillsborough County (Tampa), and the Nevada Department of Education.

Frank says that "ensuring that students can read, write, and engage in high-level math is still the core of the work we are doing. However, increasingly, we expect the charter schools we authorize to also meet the social-emotional needs of students and push them to foster students to be able to interact with the curriculum and concepts being taught at a high level, perhaps best observed through meaningful student voice in the classroom. Having students think through problems of practice and coming to conclusions collaboratively and in unexpected ways should be in the DNA of any successful school."

Charter school authorizers across the country have focused on test-based accountability and hold charter schools-which are given more autonomy than their traditional district school peers-accountable to outcomes. Nationally, authorizers closed 238 schools last year and only opened 309 new schools-the most closures and the smallest number of net new schools in two decades.

Frank explained that traditionally many authorizers mostly relied on test-based accountability because it's easier to apply the results of one exam uniformly across the board. But, he added, "there is a real push now to move beyond sole determinants of outcomes for student and most authorizers I speak to want to take a step forward."

Unfortunately, authorizers and policymakers are frustrated by the slow development of valid and reliable tools that can be used to measure success skills. For instance, the old New York State Charter School Performance Framework relies heavily on year-end state assessments. And despite all the interest in social and emotional learning, assessment of these important skills remains primitive.

However, a promising update of the Charter School Performance Framework is in the works. The revision emphasizes the importance of serving at-risk students who face adversity in school, such as those with disabilities and English language learners. It also looks to encourage schools to think deeply about ways to increase learning time by reducing suspension rates and putting additional thought into how schools can better serve and engage with students and families that have traditionally been under-served or marginalized. Lastly, it elevates the importance of academic growth and strong family, community and school partnerships.

As a charter school authorizer, over the past few years, the NYSED CSO is increasingly transparent about high standards and the need to achieve strong performance-based outcomes but also acknowledge that there are other leading indicators of success for all students, starting in kindergarten or earlier, that are important factors in strong life outcomes for students, schools and communities once students leave school and go on to college or careers. It is clear that the NYSED CSO is taking important steps to look beyond compliance and inputs, in order to ensure equity and access for all students, monitor student learning in meaningful ways, and partnering with schools to encourage them to think deeply about the mental health, critical thinking skills, and developmental outcomes of the students they serve. As Frank put it, "we need to look beyond just test scores, which are important, and look at the whole child."

This trend is in line with the aims of the National Commission on Social and Emotional and Academic Development, which recently concluded: "Until we have tools that we are confident adequately capture these skills and attributes in ways that are sensitive to age, developmental stage, and context, and commit to using the measures appropriately for improvement, we risk putting more weight on these measures than is useful."

In a proactive next step, Frank has started to ask many of the 101 charter schools they authorize to help them think through new and innovative methods for assessing success skills. These frameworks must be observable, measurable, and replicable. "We want to measure these important skills to show we value these things and so all students can benefit," said Frank. Student engagement and measuring access to socio-emotional supports such as social workers have been some of the early thoughts shared by schools.

To continue on this journey, schools can find best practices at trusted sources such as RAND Education Assessment Finder. The can also learn from their peers. Tiger Ventures and Brooklyn Laboratory High School (BLHS) are two New York schools working on assessing success skills in partnership with Stanford University and XQ. Brookyln Laboratory Charter School are working with NGLC on the MyWays initiative, with a focus on integrating non-academic habits into the classroom in order to better serve students with brain-based learning and attention issues.

Proactive steps by NYSED-including signaling what's important, having meaningful conversations with schools, and soliciting proposals for new ways to assess difficult-to-measure skills-will lead to an accountability framework that better reflects the skills needed for success in college, careers, and citizenship. And that should support the growth of more good schools for New York families.

For more, see:

This post includes mentions of XQ Institute, a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures please see our partner page .

Tom Vander Ark is author of Better Together, Smart Parents, Smart Cities and Getting Smart. He is co-founder of Getting Smart and Learn Capital and serves on the boards of 4.0 Schools, eduInnovation, Digital Learning Institute, Imagination Foundation and Charter Board Partners. Follow Tom on Twitter, @tvanderark.

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Now That Schools Are Promoting Broader Definitions of Success, How Do We Measure Progress? | Getting Smart

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As more schools adopt broader learning goals, there are a few questions vexing school leaders, including: How can we measure growth in creative thinking? How can we measure whether our graduating high school seniors have the habits necessary to succeed at college and throughout adult life?

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Kindergartners Explore Through Project Learning

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Kindergartners Explore Through Project Learning

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I wanted to post this article because it talks about how one school is using project based learning in a kindergarten classroom, but I am disappointed that it does not go more into detail about how they got there.

I also posed this second video (in pink below) I found on Edutopia that shows young learners actually doing one type of project based learning in their classroom.
https://www.edutopia.org/video/learning-problem-solving-and-growth-mindset-makerspace

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Running Time: 9 min.

"Don't go yet, because there's lots of airplanes and birds covering the sky!" warns a wary air-traffic controller from his cardboard perch above a mockup of a plane loaded with his classmates. But it's only a minor delay for students of the Yellow Pod, a small segment of the 460 kindergartners who attend the Auburn Early Education Center, in Auburn, Alabama. Soon, they will be virtually winging their way to Brazil on a fantasy flight aboard their handcrafted plane, culminating two and a half months of preparation for the role-playing exercise as part of a yearlong study of South America.

At this award-winning kindergarten learning center, shared with a special education preschool, the students decide what projects they want to tackle, and teachers guide them to resources, on the Internet and in books, that help them create something from what they learn. Whether they're building an airplane or a cruise ship, or conducting a funeral for the class praying mantis, AEEC students are learning more than basic facts and skills. They are acquiring a taste for the process of lifelong learning.

"These kids have a very authentic, real purpose for learning," says AEEC principal Lilli Land. "When you want to find something out, what do you do? You go to the computer, you get on the Internet, you get a book. You don't go to an adult and just have them feed you all the information. You have to learn to be a problem solver; you have to learn to be resourceful. So we teach them to be lifelong learners, and you have to keep them excited about the process of learning."

Although the project-based curriculum generates much of the enthusiasm for learning here, a recent infusion of technology -- putting interactive whiteboards in every classroom -- has raised the bar for students and teachers. Touching a giant screen, teacher Sandy Armstrong calls up a wall-size map of South America and points to Brazil. "That is a big place!" shouts a boy kneeling in front of her. And when she starts a video clip of an imposing anaconda, he says, "I'll bet he's gonna slide and slither and try to bite him."

"When they put it in our classroom and I saw everything that it could do just playing with it, and my kids were so excited, I could see what a difference it made in a matter of weeks," says Armstrong. "Even the teachers that have been teaching for twenty-five years that are afraid to jump into technology, they have jumped in with both feet. It's rejuvenated their ideas and their motivation."

As part of the school's literacy focus, a dedicated technology coach gives one-on-one instruction to students, who can manipulate giant letters on the interactive whiteboard. "They have a lot of problems when it comes to m and w," says Armstrong. "When they can flip the m over and it becomes a w, they get it. They'll say, 'Oh, it's standing on its head!' It's so much fun for them to do, and they're actually in charge of it. They have the power and, therefore, it's more pertinent to them."

As standardized-test pressure bears down on even the youngest learners and their teachers, Lilli Land challenges other principals to adopt AEEC's project-based-curriculum approach.

"We're teaching all the required content area, but we're doing it in a way that's more innovative, creative, that's off the path of what most people choose," Land says. "But there are many people who think, 'Well, we have to have the workbooks; our kids have to do drill and practice.' That's just scratching the surface, and it's also turning kids off to learning. And so you have to really be confident and trust in what you know is appropriate and good for young children, and believe that if you're actually involving the children every day in activities that are going to make progress in the academic areas, they're going to be fine on assessment."

Ken Ellis is executive producer of Edutopia video.

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Kindergartners Explore Through Project Learning

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Running Time: 9 min. "Don't go yet, because there's lots of airplanes and birds covering the sky!" warns a wary air-traffic controller from his cardboard perch above a mockup of a plane loaded with his classmates.

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One key feature of all performance assessments is that they require students to be active participants.

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Whenever you gather with other professionals, parents, your supervisor, principal, or members of your school board, use the opportunity to promote the use of some kind of performance assessment in early childhood classrooms. Copy and distribute the "Benefits of Performance Assessment" (see below).

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This article shed some light on the purpose of the teacher is to be a facilitator rather than the person who has and shares all of the knowledge. This allows students to do the learning through performance based tasks and teachers to guide them through the process instead of the students regurgitating and repeating skills that teachers have shown and demonstrated to them and for them.

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At Fresh Meadows Elementary School in New York City, 1st grade teacher Courtney Horan hands her student, six-year-old Wenika, a copy of the children's book Surprise Moon, by Caroline Hatton. Horan listens carefully as Wenika starts reading; this assessment will determine whether Wenika moves on to the next reading level.

The test isn't timed, but Wenika starts rattling off text like she's got somewhere to be. Recognizing that her student might be thrown off by the presence of a reporter, Horan tells Wenika to calm her nerves, slow down, and start again.

Wenika isn't the one to watch, however. That would be Horan, rapidly checking each word the child reads off a book transcript. When Wenika self-corrects, Horan marks that, too, while also watching to see if Wenika reads using syntax or visual cues.

The oral-reading portion requires a 96-percent accuracy rate as a prerequisite to advancing, but students aren't penalized if they self-correct. After the first 100 words, Horan instructs Wenika to read the rest silently.

When she finishes, Wenika is asked to retell the story as best as possible and answer a set of reading-comprehension questions. In the end, she nails the test, and advances to the next reading level. Even so, Horan walks her through a couple trouble spots from the selection and offers feedback.

Horan is using a performance-assessment practice known as running records-in this case, a version designed by the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. The practice is designed to give young students a chance to demonstrate their reading skills and understanding as a teacher interacts with them and gauges their progress.

Beyond Multiple Choice

In recent months, performance assessment has become a hot topic in education. That's thanks in large part to the Common Core State Standards, which are expected to spur the use of performance tasks in classes and on standardized tests. A growing skepticism of the value and use of "bubble-in" answers has also played a role.

In a sense, the idea of performance assessment reflects the old math-class decree to "show your work." The goal is to measure not just the final result but the process a student takes to get there. It's a form of formative assessment designed to match equally deep instruction-the kind of instruction, in other words, that's supposed to flourish under the common core.

"A multiple-choice test isn't a great performative assessment of English/language arts," said Audra Robb, director of performance assessment at the Reading and Writing Project. "It's not like you go to a job interview and they give you a multiple-choice test."

Performance tasks attempt to get into the mind of a student executing the objective. They are as much about the journey as the destination. In chemistry, for example, students might be expected to design an experiment from the ground up that would address a given hypothesis. In math, students might receive a complex story problem that would necessitate multiple types of problem-solving and an ability to communicate comprehension of the underlying standards.

Teachers as Facilitators

Fresh Meadows contracts with Teachers College for professional development, and formally administers the institution's running-records performance assessment for reading and writing four times per year. The first and last instances are used as benchmarks to gauge summer learning loss. However, students are not restricted to a reading level between those formal periods; they can petition for advancement at any time. Indeed, 4th grade teacher Sunita Singh-Jodah noted that students enjoy doing so.

"The kids look forward to getting tested for their reading levels. They come in like, 'Can you test me? Can you test me? Can you test me? You were supposed to test me!'" she said.

It's become a way of life for teachers and students alike.

"For me personally, I don't use [the] running-records sheet, but in my small group, I do look out for decoding, I do look out for fluency," Fresh Meadows 3rd grade teacher Euwon Kim said. "If I'm pulling a specific group for comprehension, I'm asking the literal and inferential questions, I'm using these components in the back of my mind, but I'm not actually using this running-records sheet."

Kim's instructional habits dovetail with the expectations of Ray Pecheone, executive director of the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity. SCALE helped lead the way on performance assessment during a high point in the 1990s and still remains at the forefront of the movement. The organization designed the archetype performance tasks to be used on the Smarter Balanced Assesment Consortium's forthcoming common-core-aligned assessments.

"Performance assessment in many ways changes the way in which teachers teach," Pecheone said. "It moves them away from just telling students about what skills and content they need to learn, to moving them from sort of a 'sage on a stage' to more of a facilitator and a coach."

An Assessment Left Behind

At the Bayard Taylor School in New York City, teachers also use the Teachers College running-records program, but that effort only started in earnest during the 2012-13 school year. The elementary school, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, uses the performance assessment twice each year, mixed in with a range of other tests.

"What we did is we figured out how to align the performance assessment so that it was either a pre-assessment for a unit we were starting, or a post-assessment for a unit we had just finished," 4th grade teacher Jessica Mactas said. "We tried to make it make sense for us and for our kids, and I think we had a lot of support in figuring out how to do that in a thoughtful way so it didn't feel like just an extra task that wasn't helpful to us."

While many teachers speak highly of performance assessments-and while those sentiments are echoed by researchers and administrators-the practice is not formally used in many districts.

It's not a coincidence that, according to experts, performance assessment's popularity plunged in 2001, when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. NCLB didn't actually restrict the use of performance assessment, but experts say that the massive volume of testing the law brought on raised issues of capacity.

"The issue is, because we've driven what counts down to 'choose one answer out of five,' there's no incentive for doing that kind of work in the classroom," said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she is one of Pecheone's colleagues, and author of a forthcoming book on performance assessment.

Furthermore, performance assessment, by its open-ended nature, necessitates some degree of subjectivity. On a multiple-choice assessment, a student is clearly right or wrong. Performance assessments rely more heavily on educator judgment. That's not inherently a problem-but then, schools don't have to train a Scantron machine.

In effect, Pecheone said, NCLB "drove critical thinking underground," and forced performance assessment along for the ride.

Performance assessment has reemerged, however, with the adoption of the common-core standards by 46 states and the District of Columbia. The standards were designed to reduce the breadth of required knowledge in exchange for a greater depth that many experts agree goes beyond the reach of multiple-choice assessment.

"It is very clear you cannot measure the common-core standards without performance-based assessment, or really any of the other analogous state standards that have been developed looking for 21st-century skills," Darling-Hammond said. "And [school systems] can say, 'Well, we're going to aspire to [those skills] but we're not going to try to ask kids to do it.' Well, at some point you gotta ask them to engage in the work."

The 10 districts now operating under the California Office of Reform Education, or CORE, have taken that idea to heart. In 2012, the CORE districts, which include Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento, undertook a grassroots effort to design and integrate performance assessments, which were piloted in the fall of that year by 400 teachers.

New Hampshire, too, has aggressively pushed to implement performance assessments. The Granite State solicited help from the Center for Collaborative Education and the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, and intends to have a set of performance tasks ready for field testing by September 2014.

Performance Anxiety

While experts emphasize that the common standards and performance assessment need each other, they also say that there are still kinks to be worked out in the partnership.

Pecheone says that new technology and strategies have narrowed some of the capacity issues performance assessment faced in the '90s but that implementation and professional-development issues remain.

"[Performance assessment] has a significant influence on the way in which teachers may conduct instruction, and that's going to require resources to build their capacity around these new assessments," Pecheone said. "If you do the training and scoring, then it can be a reliable and valid assessment system."

In fact, the teachers at Fresh Meadows and Bayard Taylor in New York receive a great deal of professional development both generally and around performance assessment. Teachers at Bayard Taylor estimate that they receive about four hours of in-school professional development each week.

"I think any time there's a new thing being implemented in the city, it can seem a little overwhelming," said 4th grade teacher Mactas. "But what was great for us is we do have staff developers who came and talked to us about the purpose of the performance assessment and how to use it. So we talked a lot about how to use it in a way that made sense for us."

In addition, Mactas' colleague, 2nd grade teacher Lisa Miller, said the school gives each grade's teachers flexibility about when to use performance assessment.

"It's not just like the school shuts down for two days and goes, 'Performance assessment time!'" Miller said. "We decide, as a grade, when we're going to do it and how we're going to do it."

Teachers College's Robb noted that performance assessment might initially seem like a hard sell to wary teachers, but many like the end result.

"Most teachers really do want to see their teaching have an effect, and I think that's the cool thing about it. Once you get really into it, you do start seeing it as a sort of feedback on your own teaching," she said.

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Performance Assessment Re-Emerging in Schools

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At Fresh Meadows Elementary School in New York City, 1st grade teacher Courtney Horan hands her student, six-year-old Wenika, a copy of the children's book Surprise Moon, by Caroline Hatton. Horan listens carefully as Wenika starts reading; this assessment will determine whether Wenika moves on to the next reading level.

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Performance Based Assessment to Meet Student Needs

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Performance Based Assessment to Meet Student Needs

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This article seemed very relevant as it goes back to the conversation we had at the beginning of this Academy in regards to the law of averages and how that backfires when it comes to learning. I liked how the article was written from a parent's perspective in their experience with a conversation they had with their daughter. This gave an interesting perspective on the impact that standardized testing can have on learners.

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Rosann Tung is the director of Research & Policy at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

My eyes glazed over at the reading passages, and I had no idea what the multiple choice questions were about. They try to trick you by making all the answers sound right. It was so boring that I didn't even try to do my best," said my tenth-grade daughter the evening after taking the PSAT at school.

A recent Huffington Post article by a poet whose work was used in the Texas state middle school assessments underscored the inanity of this type of testing. The poet herself wrote that she did not know the "correct" answers to the questions on the test about her motivations for using stanza breaks, similes, capitalization, and imagery in her own poems. "These test questions were just made up, and tragically, incomprehensibly, kids' futures and the evaluations of their teachers will be based on their ability to guess the so-called correct answer to made-up questions." She implores all stakeholders, in all caps, to "STOP TAKING THESE TEST RESULTS SERIOUSLY" (Holbrook 2017).

My daughter is a visual and kinesthetic learner in Boston Public Schools. She is creative, hardworking, and inquisitive, but she does not show most effectively what she knows and can do on traditional paper-and-pencil tests. Her current school, Fenway High School, emphasizes project-based learning and uses performance assessments such as papers, skits, presentations, and debates to determine students' mastery of content. Students have choices in what they produce, so that they are more engaged in the assignment, which is often rooted in the social, cultural, and everyday lives of teens. Examples include a critical gender and race analysis of a popular music video, a propaganda poster on a topic of her choice (body image), and a policy memo on how police departments could reduce incidents of police brutality against Black and Brown people. The culturally responsive pedagogy elevates critical dialogue, collaboration, visual representation, and inquiry, all of which have been shown to be effective instruction and assessment practices (Piazza, Rao & Protacio 2015).

Prior to Fenway, my daughter attended several traditional schools, in which test preparation and testing were the norm and occupied a great deal of instructional time. Homework included mind-numbing exercises with multiple-choice questions in the form of Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) or SAT. Last year, she attended one of Boston's exam schools, a selective public high school where admission is based entirely on a student's grades and entrance exam score. Her principal boasted that parents were happy with the school's assessment practices, which did not need to change to meet the needs of diverse learners, because "our students get high SAT scores." However, SAT scores correlate most strongly with family income and education levels (College Board 2013), not the amount of test prep or the "intelligence" of the test taker! Fueled by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its focus on standardized testing, the U.S. assessment system has been driven by capitalism rather than educational benefit. Annually, the testing industry, which four companies monopolize, is valued at between $400 and $700 million. The testing industry drives Americans to spend $13.1 billion each year on test preparation. Besides the test makers, scorers, and preparation companies, this system is designed to advantage three primary stakeholders: (1) the testing industry's corporate executives, who earn in excess of $1 million annually; (2) education technology companies, which create online software applications for textbooks, workbooks, curriculum development, formative assessment, and the like; and (3) families, predominantly White, who have the resources to avail themselves of the courses, programs, software, and exposure that lead to higher standardized test scores (Strauss 2015; Alexandra 2016).

My daughter is not alone in her negative experience of traditional assessment. In public schools that are increasingly diverse ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, achievement measurement of the type born of NCLB becomes not only meaningless, but also indefensible: "The acceptance of the reality of diversity is to undermine the possibility for standardized, mass-produced, universally applicable measurement instruments" (Hilliard III 2004).

In this issue of VUE, we propose an alternative to standardized testing, whose purpose is to sort and rank students and schools. This alternative, performance assessment, is personalized and rigorous, and improves teaching and learning - thereby benefiting both students and teachers. Against a backdrop of the opportunities provided by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the challenges of a Trump/DeVos education administration seemingly committed to privatizing public education, performance assessment is an opportunity for public schools and districts to better meet the needs of all students and to use more relevant, engaging curriculum and instruction that prepares students for complex problem-solving and collaboration.

The connection between performance assessment and equity remains a hypothesis. We know that standardized tests exacerbate opportunity gaps. Whether performance assessments reduce opportunity gaps and lead to greater equity depends on how they are implemented and used in instruction. Currently, too little evidence exists that performance assessment closes the "achievement gap" for students who have been historically marginalized. However, given that performance assessments provide increased learning opportunities and deeper engagement, we expect that students who have been underserved by our inequitable systems will do better with performance assessments than with standardized tests, both to inform instruction and to make decisions regarding promotion and graduation. Some articles in this issue of VUE highlight how students like English language learners, Native Americans, students of color who live in poverty, and refugees benefit from performance assessments. Other articles focus on supporting implementation of performance assessments through teacher collaboration; school, district, and state networks; innovative uses of technology; and customized, teacher-led professional development.

My hope is that this compilation of perspectives educates and inspires practitioners, researchers, and advocates to make performance assessment systems the norm rather than the exception - not only for my daughter, but for all students with diverse histories and learning styles and for their teachers, whose dialogue, agency, and learning would be transformed.

Alexandra, R. 2016. " The Business of Standardized Testing," Huffington Post (April 24).

College Board. 2013. College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report. New York: College Board.

Hilliard III, A. G. (N. B. Amankwatia II). 2004. " Assessment Equity in a Multicultural Society," New Horizons for Learning website, Johns Hopkins School of Education.

Holbrook, S. 2017. " I Can't Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems," Huffington Post (January 5).

Piazza, S. V., S. Rao, and M. S. Protacio. 2015. "Converging Recommendations for Culturally Responsive Literacy Practices: Students with Learning Disabilities, English Language Learners, and Socioculturally Diverse Learners," International Journal of Multicultural Education 17, no. 3:1-20.

Stecher, B. 2010. Performance Assessment in an Era of Standards-Based Educational Accountability. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

Strauss, V. 2015. " Five Reasons Standardized Testing Isn't Likely to Let Up," Washington Post (March 11).

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Performance-Based Assessment: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners

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Rosann Tung is the director of Research & Policy at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. My eyes glazed over at the reading passages, and I had no idea what the multiple choice questions were about. They try to trick you by making all the answers sound right.

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I like thinking of PB Learning in Kindergarten vs PB Assessments.
Team building to succeed!

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Performance-based learning is when students participate in performing tasks or activities that are meaningful and engaging. The purpose of this kind of learning is to help students acquire and apply knowledge, practice skills, and develop independent and collaborative work habits. The culminating activity or product for performance-based learning is one that lets a student demonstrate evidence of understanding through a transfer of skills.

A performance-based assessment is open-ended and without a single, correct answer, and it should demonstrate authentic learning, such as the creation of a newspaper or class debate. The benefit of performance-based assessments is that students who are more actively involved in the learning process absorb and understand the material at a much deeper level. Other characteristics of performance-based assessments are that they are complex and time-bound.

Also, there are learning standards in each discipline that set academic expectations and define what is proficient in meeting that standard. Performance-based activities can integrate two or more subjects and should also meet 21st Century expectations whenever possible:

There are also Information Literacy standards and Media Literacy standards that require performance-based learning.

Clear Expectations

Performance-based activities can be challenging for students to complete. They need to understand from the beginning exactly what is being asked of them and how they will be assessed.

Examples and models may help, but it is more important to provide detailed criteria that will be used to assess the performance-based assessment. All criteria should be addressed in a scoring rubric.

Observations are an important component and can be used to provide students with feedback to improve performance. Teachers and students can both use observations. There may be peer to peer student feedback. There could be a checklist or a tally to record student achievement.

The goal of performance-based learning should be to enhance what the students have learned, not just have them recall facts. The following six types of activities provide good starting points for assessments in performance-based learning.

Presentations

One easy way to have students complete a performance-based activity is to have them do a presentation or report of some kind. This activity could be done by students, which takes time, or in collaborative groups.

The basis for the presentation may be one of the following:

Providing information

Teaching a skill

Reporting progress

Persuading others

Students may choose to add in visual aids or a PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides to help illustrate elements in their speech. Presentations work well across the curriculum as long as there is a clear set of expectations for students to work with from the beginning.

Portfolios

Student portfolios can include items that students have created and collected over a period. Art portfolios are for students who want to apply to art programs in college.

Another example is when students create a portfolio of their written work that shows how they have progressed from the beginning to the end of class. The writing in a portfolio can be from any discipline or a combination of disciplines.

Some teachers have students select those items they feel represents their best work to be included in a portfolio. The benefit of an activity like this is that it is something that grows over time and is therefore not just completed and forgotten. A portfolio can provide students with a lasting selection of artifacts that they can use later in their academic career.

Reflections may be included in student portfolios in which students may make a note of their growth based on the materials in the portfolio.

Performances

Dramatic performances are one kind of collaborative activities that can be used as a performance-based assessment. Students can create, perform, and/or provide a critical response. Examples include dance, recital, dramatic enactment. There may be prose or poetry interpretation.

This form of performance-based assessment can take time, so there must be a clear pacing guide.

Students must be provided time to address the demands of the activity; resources must be readily available and meet all safety standards. Students should have opportunities to draft stage work and practice.

Developing the criteria and the rubric and sharing these with students before evaluating a dramatic performance is critical.

Projects are commonly used by teachers as performance-based activities. They can include everything from research papers to artistic representations of information learned. Projects may require students to apply their knowledge and skills while completing the assigned task. They can be aligned with the higher levels of creativity, analysis, and synthesis.

Students might be asked to complete reports, diagrams, and maps. Teachers can also choose to have students work individually or in groups.

Journals may be part of a performance-based assessment. Journals can be used to record student reflections. Teachers may require students to complete journal entries. Some teachers may use journals as a way to record participation.

Exhibits and Fairs

Teachers can expand the idea of performance-based activities by creating exhibits or fairs for students to display their work. Examples include things like history fairs to art exhibitions. Students work on a product or item that will be exhibited publicly.

Exhibitions show in-depth learning and may include feedback from viewers.

In some cases, students might be required to explain or defend their work to those attending the exhibition.

Some fairs like science fairs could include the possibility of prizes and awards.

A debate in the classroom is one form of performance-based learning that teaches students about varied viewpoints and opinions. Skills associated with debate include research, media and argument literacy, reading comprehension, evidence evaluation, public speaking, and civic skills.

There are many different formats for debate. One is the fishbowl debate in which a handful of students form a half circle facing the other students and debate a topic. The rest of the classmates may pose questions to the panel.

Another form is a mock trial where teams representing the prosecution and defense take on the roles of attorneys and witnesses. A judge, or judging panel, oversees the courtroom presentation.

Middle school and high schools can use debates in the classroom, with increased levels of sophistication by grade level.

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Great Ideas for Performance-Based Activities

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These six kinds of authentic performance-based activities allow students to apply knowledge, practice skills, and develop independent work habits.

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Performance Based Assessment for Reading

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Performance Based Assessment for Reading

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This article was highlighting how to use performance based assessments in a reading group. She talked about how to help your students by having some prompts they could choose from to engage their thinking/learning to present. I really liked that it didn't require much from the teacher but the small amount made a big difference in the end product.

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To evaluate students' performance assessments, you need to rely on your own impressions of each child's performance and on a rubric — a table with numerical ratings and explanations of the characteristics of each number on the rating scale. For example, Developing performance assessments in social studies — or any subject area for that matter — is a process much like the one I described for reading comprehension. Look for interesting nonfiction stories and articles that relate to your students' studies in history and social studies. (
Performance Assessment for Reading
By Adele Fiderer

When I first began using literature to teach reading in my fourth-grade classroom, I encouraged my students to choose their own books, read them independently, and periodically write and talk to me about what they were reading. In time we developed portfolios of their best work for reading and writing. Yet I had a nagging feeling that some key element was missing from the assessment process. I searched for a way to measure comprehension that would support the natural act of reading and responding to a story and allow for diverse interpretations. By reading professional literature, I discovered performance assessments. Here's the process I use now.

Select a Text
The performance assessment I use for reading comprehension two or three times a year requires a common reading and writing task for the entire class. The first step is to select a text that your students have not read — a good story with a significant theme appropriate for your grade level, a clearly identifiable problem and resolution, well-developed characters, and high interest for your students.
Provide Writing Prompts
Once you have selected a text, think about designing a prompt — or writing task — to which students can respond in writing. If you teach primary children, encourage the use of invented spellings or approximations to help them freely express their ideas. Create a task that gets students to really think about the story. Then, along with sheets of lined paper on which they will write their final ideas, provide students with prewriting organizers such as webs, maps, and Venn diagrams, or lists of questions so students can make notes about their ideas. It's also a good idea to allow plenty of time — perhaps two class periods — for students to complete the performance assessment. Here are some sample writing prompts.

For primary students: Think about how you would tell a friend this story. Use a story map outline to help you remember all the important parts of a story. Then write about the story on lined paper.

For middle and upper elementary students: Characters, like people in real life, often change as a result of events. First use your planning sheets to make notes about:
— what the character was like at the beginning of the story,
— what the character was like at the end of the story, and
— the events and people that led the character to change.
Now use lined paper to write about how the character changed.

For students in any grade: Write about an important problem in the story. Tell why it is important and how it was solved. First, make notes on the planning sheet. Then, once you've organized your thoughts, write about the story on lined paper.

Work With Scoring Rubrics
the rubric I use provides a scale of 0–3 to evaluate children's writings about a story problem.
With practice, you will find that scoring is a quick and reliable task, but there are a few things you should know about the process. When reading a student's response, refer to the rubric frequently. Ask yourself which descriptions best match the student's work, but keep in mind that there is some variation. For example, some papers might be a high 3, others a middle 3, and some a low 3. For this reason, you may wish to use pluses or minuses to make finer distinctions.

Whichever scoring system you use, focus only on the criteria in the rubric and avoid comparing students' papers. When in doubt, refer to the child's prewriting organizer. Younger children may write more on an organizer than on a blank sheet because it is a more directed task.

Sample Rubric
Notice that the rubric focuses on three important features you can modify to evaluate a wide variety of written responses in just about any curriculum area. Whatever rubric you develop, be sure to explain the criteria to your students before they begin to write. Knowing your expectations in advance will help most students produce better work.
3 — The written response is complete. It indicates a very good understanding of the story and its problem, and provides accurate, and relevant details, information, and supportive reasoning.

2 — The response is partial and indicates a fairly good understanding of the story. Although the information selected includes mostly accurate details and ideas, some may be irrelevant or unrelated to the story's problem.

1 — The response is fragmentary and indicates only minimal understanding of the story's problem. It includes mainly random details and irrelevant information.

0 — There is little or no response. Inaccurate and irrelevant details and ideas indicate a serious misunderstanding of the story.

Beyond Reading: Assessing Social Studies

For example, as part of a study of immigration, sixth graders read "The Letters of Rosie O'Brien, a Convict in New South Wales" ( Cobblestone, April and May 1987). On one side of the planning sheet, students listed words and phrases that they felt described Rosie. On the other side of the sheet they provided evidence from the story that backed up their opinions. The students were then asked to use their knowledge of Rosie's character to write a letter from Rosie to her sister.
Cobblestone, Faces, and S cholastic News magazines are three good story resources.) Then design a prewriting organizer and a writing prompt that challenges students to think in-depth about the subject. Create a rubric for scoring the writing.
Adele Fiderer has extensive experience as a classroom teacher and language arts developer. She is the author of Teaching Writing: A Workshop Approach and Practical Assessments for Literature-Based Reading Classrooms (both published by Scholastic Professional Books).

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When I first began
using literature to teach reading in my fourth-grade classroom, I encouraged
my students to choose their own books, read them independently, and periodically
write and talk to me about what they were reading. In time we developed
portfolios of their best work for reading and writing. Yet I had a nagging
feeling that some key element was missing from the assessment process.
I searched for a way to measure comprehension that would support the natural
act of reading and responding to a story and allow for diverse interpretations.
By reading professional literature, I discovered performance assessments.
Here’s the process I use now.

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This article talked about how performance assessments take students knowledge of specific skills to the next level, and can be used in the real world.  Here's a quote I really liked from this article which I think really reflects what performance based assessment is:
"Here's how you know when you have true, meaningful performance assessment happening in your classroom: when preparing for the test, taking the test, and then applying the skill in real life all look the same."- Bob Lenz

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David Conley has just released a new report that highlights the importance of defining a new era for authentic student performance assessment. In A New Era for Educational Assessment, Conley argues that the time is ripe for a major shift in educational assessment, from an overreliance on standardized tests of math and reading, which tell us little about college and career readiness, to the use of multiple measures to gauge progress in learning the full range of content and skills that truly matter after high school.

When we started Envision Schools 13 years ago, we believed then -- as we do now -- that standardized assessments were necessary but insufficient for determining college and career readiness. It seemed obvious to us, as it does to so many educators, that bubble-in answers would only ever tell part of the story and that broader, richer assessments were critical to showing the full range of a student's abilities.

This is why we, in collaboration with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), created the Deeper Learning Student Assessment System (DLSAS). Schools and students needed more complete and better ways of demonstrating knowledge and skills along with ways of conducting authentic performance assessment for students.

Conley's report comes at just the right time; while we have heard endlessly about teacher, student, and parent frustration over standardized testing, about what those tests are missing, and how limited they are, the educational community has been too silent about alternatives. Conley offers several suggestions, and his report is essential to the larger conversation about performance assessment and what needs to happen in American schools.

Performance Assessment

But what exactly is "authentic performance assessment" and how do we know when it's happening? What are the reasons why we need to care about Conley's report?

Real performance assessment happens when we measure not just knowledge, but also skills and competencies that are inextricably related to success in college and career. This kind of assessment is concerned not just with content but also with real-world applications. Here's how you know when you have true, meaningful performance assessment happening in your classroom: when preparing for the test, taking the test, and then applying the skill in real life all look the same.

Consider the skill of parallel parking (or any other driving competency). How do you learn and practice it? By parallel parking. When you're getting a driver's license, how are you tested for this skill? By parallel parking. And what do you do with the skill after you pass the test? You parallel park.

The driver's license exam is a culminating assessment that results in the legal right to drive. It is not the only assessment in the process: The driver's permit exam (usually a written or electronic, standard multiple-choice test) assesses your knowledge of the rules of the road. It is an important step in the process, but not as important as demonstrating what you can actually do with your knowledge. That's where the performance test of actually driving and parking the car comes in.

Seen in this light, the need for real performance assessment in schools becomes more obvious. We can see exactly how important doing is to the process of learning, and we can easily agree that a driver's license should only be awarded to someone who knows not just the rules of the road but also how to operate a car.

Conley's report helps us understand the continuum of the types of assessments and invites states to consider how to move their assessments from "Parts and Pieces" towards "Big Picture:"

Standardized assessments, even when they include open-ended questions and are performance-based, only give us part of the picture of a student's readiness for college and career success. Project-centered tasks ask students to practice and demonstrate command over the very skills they will need for the next step in their learning journey.

We think we need to move from having students drive toward their future while looking in the rear view mirror (tell what you know) to an "Eyes Forward" assessment (preparing them for the world to come). The following video created with Envision and the design firm IDEO illustrates this analogy.

Conley's Key Findings

1. College and career readiness depends on more than just academic knowledge and skills. Students also need to develop an array of personal and interpersonal competencies, as well as practical knowledge about the transition to life after high school. Examples include time management, perseverance, goal setting, self- advocacy, and even financial planning.

2. Schools can assess and teach a much wider range of competencies. Research shows convincingly that student motivation, persistence, self- discipline, problem solving, college planning, and other critical elements of college and career readiness can be assessed and taught effectively.

3. Traditional state tests are convenient but not very informative. Standardized, multiple-choice reading and math tests are reliable, familiar, affordable, and easy to administer. Unfortunately, they do not provide much useful information about students' progress toward long-term goals.

4. States are taking a new look at performance assessments. Today, a number of states are returning to performance assessments in order to get a better read on college and career readiness; the movement is already happening.

5. College and career readiness are best measured through a combination of assessments. Multiple-choice achievement tests have their uses, but so do diagnostic tests, performance tasks, informal assessments, and other means of tracking student progress. No single measure is sufficient to judge school performance and to guide instruction.

What Educators Can Do

Conley offers a wide range of recommendations for education stakeholders to follow; only a few are listed here. This is a starting point, a place for those of us who want to see real change happen to come together and make agreements. For a complete list of Conley's recommendations, see the full report. For now, let's take his advice and start with the following:

1. Define college and career readiness comprehensively.

2. Adapt federal education policy to allow greater flexibility in the types of data that can be used to demonstrate student learning and growth.

3. Look for ways to improve the Common Core State Standards and related assessments so that they become better measures of deeper learning.

4. Determine the professional learning, curriculum, and resource needs of educators to implement a new system of assessments.

The time is now for states and districts, charter management organizations, schools, and all of the educational initiatives to align with assessing deeper learning outcomes. To do so is to truly prepare our young people for college and career success in ways that will have real and positive impacts on their lives.

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David Conley has just released a new report that highlights the importance of defining a new era for authentic student performance assessment.

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What is Performance Based Assessment-2nd

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What is Performance Based Assessment-2nd

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This article is easy to understand what performance based assessments are and how to begin to creating them.

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Even though this article is talking about high school students, the theme of the article is getting students to show their knowledge through really life tasks/activities instead of answering multiple choice questions.

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Instead of doing math problems with no context, students at this school role-play real jobs.

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2nd Grade Performance Tasks that are Standards Based

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2nd Grade Performance Tasks that are Standards Based

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This article was very easy to navigate and was separated into each standard that we should be meeting. There are specific examples of some performance task assessments. The tasks allowed students to be more involved in the learning, rather than just rote memorization.

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common core resources /mathematical content standards /standards by grade /2nd grade /

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Teacher's Guide to Performance Based Tasks and Assessments

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Teacher's Guide to Performance Based Tasks and Assessments

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This is a chapter from the book Teacher's Guide to Performance Based Tasks and Assessments. I chose this article as well because I felt that it gave a detailed overview of what performance based tasks and performance based assessments look like in each area of learning and each learning level.

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Inside Mathematics Kindergarten Based Performance Tasks 

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Inside Mathematics Kindergarten Based Performance Tasks 

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I picked this article, because I think it had relevant resources that were related to kindergarten. These tasks meet the kindergarten math standards while still allowing students to be involved in the learning process. The tasks allow teachers to evaluate and understand their students thought process in each of the math standards.

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These tasks are grade-level formative performance assessment tasks aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Some have accompanying scoring rubrics and discussion of student work samples. Others, such as the Dana Center Early Mathematics Tasks, connect to children's literature.

You may download and use these tasks for professional development purposes without modifying the tasks.
Quick reference: What are these tools?

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Kindergarten Common Core Resources | Inside Mathematics

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These tasks are grade-level formative performance assessment tasks aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Some have accompanying scoring rubrics and discussion of student work samples. Others, such as the Dana Center Early Mathematics Tasks, connect to children's literature. You may download and use these tasks for professional development purposes without modifying the tasks.