Education World
offers a brief summary of findings from a recently released study of assessment
reform. Is assessment reform working? How are teachers handling new approaches
to assessment? Are students and curriculum benefiting from new assessment
methods approaches?
Many performance assessment tools -- essays, research projects, and
other open-ended measures, as opposed to multiple-choice assessments --
are not novel. They have been used for years. What is relatively new,
however, is the sweeping assessment reform movement. The movement involves
the use of performance assessments to bolster state, district, or schoolwide
goals. More and more often, performance assessment results are being used
to adjust or revamp instruction and curriculum in addition to their traditional
uses in assessing student abilities.
A recent study of assessment reform was conducted "to elucidate the
nature and effects of the assessment reform movement taking place across
the country." The study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's
Office of Educational Research and Improvement, had among its major goals
documenting and analyzing key characteristics of performance assessments;
documenting and analyzing facilitators and barriers in assessment
reform; and
documenting and assessing the impacts of performance assessment on
teaching and learning.
During the spring of 1994 and of 1995, OERI researchers visited 16 schools
that were implementing performance assessments. The sample schools included
elementary, middle, and high schools in diverse geographical locations.
The result of the OERI study were published recently in Studies
of Education Reform: Assessment of Student Performance.
THE "CAMEL PROJECT"
The qualitative nature of the study means it includes diverse and interesting
examples of performance assessment formats.
One example of such a performance assessment comes from Noakes Elementary
School in the Anton School District in Iowa, which decided to join the
New Standards Project (NSP) in 1992.
The NSP is jointly run by the National Center on Education and
the Economy and the Learning Research and Development Center at the University
of Pittsburgh, and it works toward developing and adopting a set of academic
standards and innovative methods to measure student learning.
All teachers at Noakes, a K-6 school, use performance assessments, though
in diverse ways. Some teachers use portfolios in all subject areas, others
in just one subject.
The "Camel Project" was a fourth-grade English Language Arts task at
Noakes that took place during four days in 45-minute class periods.
Day 1: The teacher gave the students an overview of what the task
was about and what students should concentrate on during the task. On
this day, the students read "Ships of the Desert," an essay on the history,
temperament, and physical characteristics of different types of camels
and answered questions about the story.
Day 2: Students chose a topic (such as "Should our community have
a camel in the zoo?") and began writing their essays.
Day 3: Students talked in small groups about what they had written
on the previous day.
Day 4: Students revised their essays.
During the entire project, teachers gave instructions and advice on the
writing of essays.
OTHER CASE STUDIES
Located near Albany and Schenectady, New York, Hudson High school serves
1,400 9th through 12th graders. For assessment purposes, students in Hudson's
Earth Science course were required to "conduct a long-term study that
requires understanding of key scientific and geological concepts and that
promotes the development of analytical, and investigative skills." Each
student was provided with a rock sample. Students were instructed to:
learn as much as possible about the "pet rock" they received of unknown
composition and origin;
keep a detailed scientific journal of their observations, inferences,
and predictions about the pet rock;
investigate the rock's relationship to the environment; and
end their investigation with a multimedia, oral presentation summarizing
their research.
A very different kind of assessment format is used with students at
Ninos Bonitos Elementary School in San Diego, California. In 1994-95,
Ninos Bonitos served 924 students in pre-K through 6th grade. Of the children,
39 percent were of Southeast Asian heritage, 46 percent were Hispanic,
5 percent were African American, and the rest were East Asians. Seventy-seven
percent of the children were identified as having limited English proficiency.
For a portfolio task, a third/fourth-grade group, made up of "transitional"
students who are almost, but not quite, fluent in English, spent a morning
working on six computers. After receiving training in the use of educational
software, their teacher had designed a performance task that had the students
describe and illustrate a book they had read about problems Southeast
Asian students experience as they assimilate into their new U.S. culture.
As students worked, the teacher coached both writing and computer skills.
Students saved their work electronically and in hard copy for their language
arts portfolios, which are shared with parents three times a year.
TEACHER AND STUDENT RESPONSES
Evidence about the effects of performance assessments on student learning
are mainly anecdotal. Teachers and students talk of student motivation
being higher with the change in performance assessments and thus in content.
Teachers also say students are improving their writing skills and critical-thinking
skills as well as, for example, their presentation skills.
The overall impression from the study is that teachers' find clear rewards
for them and for students in performance assessment, but that they also
voice concerns about reform methods.
Many teachers say that the overriding benefit of performance assessment
is that it gives learning "real life applications" rather than having
students work almost in a vacuum.
On the other hand, a number of teachers also voiced concerns that new
performance assessment systems require more teacher time to develop assignments
and assessments. Perhaps, some teachers indicate, this is a trade-off
for more in-depth learning by students. Some teachers also fear a lack
of objectivity in the scoring rubrics that are part of the new assessment.
Many students also voiced their appreciation of the "real life applications"
of what they were learning and the way they were learning it. Yet some
students expressed a kind of confusion at, for example, the new "thematic
unit" approach. The students wanted "...more organization of themes --
everything is mixed up in themes; we don't know where we are."
TEACHER APPROPRIATION
If performance assessment is adopted, teachers must use the assessment,
adapting it as needed for their classrooms. The degree to which teachers
"appropriate" performance assessments for their classrooms is related
largely the teacher's degree of involvement in developing and implementing
the performance assessment system; the flexibility of the assessment system;
and the training they received.
Two findings highlight the problem with judging the quality of the pedagogical
changes seen. Teachers are still learning how to use performance assessments
in their classes, and so they themselves find it hard to evaluate a relationship
between the pedagogical change and students' learning. Furthermore, standards
for performance may be unclear, unarticulated, or variable.
The study concludes by recommending further research in these areas:
how the technical properties and fairness of performance assessment
systems can be enhanced;
the most effective melding of instructional models and assessments
to achieve improved student learning;
longitudinal effects of facilitators and barriers in assessment change;
how different types of performance assessments are or are not appropriate
for assessing the achievements of children with disabilities;
types of professional development and support activities that best
enable teachers to implement different types of performance assessment;
the impact of performance assessments and related teaching strategies
on student learning;
how opportunity-to-learn factors affect disadvantaged students' performance
on different types of performance assessments; and
the long-term benefits of performance assessments compared with the
long-term costs of developing and implementing performance assessments.
For more information about the study, or to learn more about the case
studies and assessment projects detailed in the study, you can find its
entire
text on the U.S. Department of Education's Web site. For additional
information about performance assessment, the list of related Internet
sites that follows might be helpful.
Related Sites
INTERNET LINKS RELATED TO PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
Alternative
Assessment: Implications for Social Studies This ERIC Digest summarizes
an article about changes to performance assessment and how those changes
have affected the learning and teaching of social studies. Emphasized
is the close link between the over-arching goal of public education
and that of social studies.
Fairness
in Performance Assessment This ERIC Digest maintains that although
pedagogical advantages of performance assessment (in buttressing instruction
focused on higher order thinking skills) are obvious, research indicates
unresolved logistics and psychometric problems, specifically with score
generalizability.
Office
of Research Education: Consumer Guide: Performance Assessment The
September 1993 Consumer Guide from the U.S. Department of Education's
Office of Educational Research and Improvement gives a quick overview
of performance assessment: what it is, how it works, what research says
about it, what it costs, and where to find out more about it.
Kossor
Education Newsletter Billed as a newsletter with "timely, useful
information for parents and others who are concerned about public education
in America," it presents the possible downside of performance assessment
reform.
Portfolio
Assessment This bibliography of portfolio assessment resources is
a good starting point for exploring the topic. Several links to Internet
sites are provided, and citations from the ERIC database, including
how to order ERIC Journal and ERIC Document Citations, are listed.
Education World
offers a brief summary of findings from a recently released study of assessment
reform. Is assessment reform working? How are teachers handling new approaches
to assessment? Are students and curriculum benefiting from new assessment
methods approaches?