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Developing Performance Assessments

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The process of designing quality performance tasks and projects involves attending to three major elements:

• The design of the activity in which students will be engaged

• The standards or outcomes that are being addressed by the activity

• The traits or criteria used to assess the activity

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Steps to take before beginning Performance Assessment Tasks

• Establish the outcome(s) to be measured.

• Devise clear instruction to be provided to students.

• Determine conditions for assessment (e.g., setting, amount of time needed, amount of intervention).

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• Gather all the equipment or resource materials that may be used.

• Establish whether the student will have any choices in how to respond (e.g., oral responses).

• Determine whether the student will require accommodations or modifications.

• Develop the scoring criteria to be used.

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Standards or Outcomes

• Projects or performance tasks should be carefully aligned with the content standards or predetermined learner outcomes.

• A careful task analysis will determine if the task contains content sufficient to warrant the time and effort that will be expended.

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Criteria for Performance-Based Assessment

• Consequences

- Does using an assessment lead to intend consequences, or does it produce unintended consequences, such as teaching to the test?

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• Fairness

- Does the assessment enable students from all cultural backgrounds to demonstrate their skills?

• Transfer and generalizabiliy

- Do the results generalize to other problems and situations?

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• Cognitive complexity

- Does the assessment adequately assess higher levels of thinking and understanding?

• Content quality

- Are the tasks worth the time and effort of students and raters?

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• Content coverage

- Does the assessment enable adequate content coverage?

• Meaningfulness- Are the assessment tasks meaningful

to students, and do they motivate them to perform their best?

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• Cost and efficiency

- Has attention been given to the efficiency of data collection designs and scoring procedures?

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• Create a task that will allow the students to demonstrate their knowledge, reasoning, skills, and/or attitudes.

• These tasks should be authentic (real-world), feasible (in time, space, and cost), fair (not biased based on gender, race, etc.), flexible (allow multiple outcomes), and observable.

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• For example, the performance task may be that students conduct a science experiment, create a clay sculpture, or write a position paper that advocates a change in the school dress code.

• After the task is defined, a rubric can be developed to assess the task.