September 1996 Alternative Assessment Encyclopedia
Educators who want cutting-edge information on new forms of assessment can search databases and browse libraries. Or they can save countless hours by going straight to a rich new resource from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.An encyclopedic collection of almost 100 papers and articles by some of the best-known names in the field offers one-stop shopping on assessment. Topics range from "anchor papers" to outcomes, group performance to portfolios, reform to rubrics, reliability to validity. Edited by NWREL researchers Robert Blum and Judith Arter, A Handbook for Student Performance Assessment in an Era of Restructuring gives breadth and depth to a subject that is critical to the success of school reform.
The handbook discusses why assessments need to change and how performance-based approaches can guide school improvement. It explains how to base assessments on goals for student learning and integrate assessments with curriculum and instruction. It explores how to design performance tasks and evaluate the quality of student performance. It talks about how to implement performance assessments at the classroom, school, and district levels and monitor the results. Included are dozens of assessments that require students to respond to realistic situations and apply skills from various subjects.
"Performance assessment is one of the hottest topics in education today," write Blum and Arter in the handbook's introduction. "It seems as though assessment, particularly performance assessment, enters every discussion about schools-and rightly so, for assessment is the basis for determining the success of students, teachers, and schools. Developing high-quality assessments, however, has proven the most difficult aspect of improving schools."
Among the notable writers and researchers whose bylines appear in the handbook are Grant Wiggins, Bena Kallick, Robert Marzano, Joan Herman, Richard Stiggins, Jay McTighe, Alfie Kohn, Linda Darling-Hammond, and the late Ernest Boyer. Some articles were written for the handbook. Others were reprinted from book publishers, education journals, government education agencies, exemplary schools, and research centers.
The 650-page handbook, bound in a three-ring binder, is organized into 10 chapters:
- Setting the Stage
- Placing Student Performance
- Assessment Within the Context of School Restructuring
- Developing Student Learning Goals for the 21st Century
- Aligning Assessment with Curriculum and Instruction
- Designing Performance Assessment Tasks
- Establishing Performance Criteria
- Using Performance Assessment Information for Improvement
- Implementing Performance Assessment
- Performance Assessment Examples
- Resources
Chapter VI, Establishing Performance Criteria, offers an example of the handbook's scope. The chapter begins with an introduction to and overview of the topic by Judith Arter. She goes on to define performance criteria and distinguish between what she calls "task-specific scoring" and "generalized, judgmental scoring." The chapter then presents several papers that give detailed discussions of how to develop and use scoring guides, often called rubrics, for both instruction and assessment. A paper by assessment giant Grant Wiggins offers a detailed explanation of rubrics in an easy-to-follow Q&A format. He answers such difficult questions as this: Are criteria subjective? Can all the criteria we value be formalized into rubrics? What about hard-to-pin-down outcomes like creativity and open-mindedness?
Other papers in the chapter discuss self-assessment using performance task assessment lists; writing assessment using the six-trait analytical model; performance assessment in science; developmental continuums in reading, speaking, and writing at the primary level; problem solving in math; and assessing portfolios.
The final chapter, Performance Assessment Examples, includes the writing assessment from the Oregon Department of Education; schoolwide portfolios at Metro High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; creative problem-solving criteria development at Waialae Elementary School in Honolulu; and the senior project, an integrated assessment model, at Oregon's South Medford High School.
"Performance assessment is hardly new," note Blum and Arter. "What is new are the attempts to give such assessments a more central role in large-scale assessment and to make the judgments that occur within the classroom more systematic. The challenge in both these areas is to make subjective assessments as objective as possible; to make them more systematic and, therefore, more credible."
Copies of A Handbook for Student Performance Assessment in an Era of Restructuring can be ordered by sending $120 to: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1250 N. Pitt Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. For more information, call the ASCD at (800) 933-2723.
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