Performance Assessment
Learn more about testing where students apply their knowledge to authentic problems and create a deliverable graded against specific criteria
What Is Performance Assessment?
Here's a handy glossary on terms like project-based learning, competency-based learning, and standards-based grading.
Assessment
Performance Assessment Re-Emerging in Schools
Looking for better ways to measure the "deeper learning" goals of the common standards, schools are increasingly turning to formalized performance tasks.
Special Education
Advent of 'Smart Drugs' Raises Safety, Ethical Concerns
Should healthy students have access to the growing variety of chemicals that can boost attention, memory, concentration, and other abilities related to academic performance?
Teaching
Competency-Based Schools Embrace Digital Learning
Educators using competency-based education coupled with technology will have a head start in preparing for common-core assessments, experts say.
School & District Management
New Studies Dissect School Turnarounds
Researchers say it takes a mix of strategies—but not too many—to engineer school improvement.
Assessment
Principals' Performance Reviews Are Getting a Fresh Look
While national attention focuses on finding better ways to evaluate teachers, efforts are quietly growing to improve the principal-evaluation process.
School & District Management
Principals' Job Reviews Getting a Fresh Look
While national attention focuses on finding better ways to evaluate teachers, efforts are quietly growing to improve the principal-evaluation process.
School & District Management
Study Finds Key Cost Savings for Performance Assessments
A new study finds key costs savings for assessment systems that tilt more toward essays and performance-based items.
Education
Performance-Based Assessment and Teachers
As I travel and talk to teachers, they consistently tell me that one of their biggest frustrations is the testing under the No Child Left Behind Act. Such testing is largely dominated by multiple-choice questions, and teachers feel under pressure to "teach to the test" or prep students for these kinds of questions.
Assessment
Opinion
Performance-Based Funding
"The basic problem with most school finance systems, both those in existence and those proposed, is that funding is separated from education policy,” write Eric A. Hanushek and Alfred A. Lindseth.
College & Workforce Readiness
Showing What They Know
In Rhode Island, performance-based assessments are now required for high school graduation. The requirement stems from a 2003 policy change by the state board of regents and the state’s outgoing commissioner of elementary and secondary education.
Federal
Federal File
Report Card Time for Research Arm of Education Dept.
The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the Department of Education, is the latest department program to get an “effective” rating from the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Assessment
Explainer
Assessment
Federal law requires that states annually test students in reading and mathematics.
Assessment
Opinion
If You Hate Standards, Learn To Love The Bell Curve
Despite the obvious flaws of an educational system based upon academic standards, it is far superior to the available alternatives, argues Douglas B. Reeves.
Education
Performance-Based Assessment Gains Prominent Place on Research Docket
Spurred in part by strong interest from educators and policymakers, researchers have turned the study of alternatives to traditional standardized tests into one of the hottest topics in their field, and their work has begun to bear fruit.
