Performance Based Assessment


A performance assessment can evaluate students who are demonstrating their skills by performing certain tasks, or it can evaluate products that students have produced to demonstrate their knowledge According to the CCSSO, “performance assessments are ways to measure students’ knowledge and skills that go beyond asking them to answer multiple-choice or fill-in-the-space questions. Typically, students are asked to complete a hands on task that can take 40 minutes or can be completed over several class periods. For example, students might be asked to research and write a magazine article or to conduct and explain the results of a scientific experiment.” Performance assessments can be activities such as science experiments and lab procedures, essays, speeches, computer programming, and so forth. Constructing performance assessment rubrics and applying these assessment strategies to the school program will enable students to demonstrate their basic skills through a real-world application.



Together, the assessment task and the scoring method comprise the performance assessment. (The performance assessment could consist of a single task and a scoring method, or it could consist of multiple tasks and one or multiple scoring methods.) Following Messick's (1992) conceptualization (and modifying it somewhat), performance assessments can be divided into two rough categories:


  • Task-Centered performance assessments that are primarily intended to tap into and evaluate specific skills and competencies.
  • Construct-Centered performance assessments that are intended to tap into and sample from a domain of skills and competencies.
Task-centered performance assessments tend to consist of tasks that allow little student control and specific scoring rubrics for judging student performance on the assessment tasks. On the other hand, construct-centered performance assessments consist of tasks that may allow a fair amount of student control; they often utilize a generic scoring rubric (or some other, non-specific criteria) for judging student performance.

Coleman believes the transition to Common Core Standards will be finished in 2014 or 2015 when the assessments aligned to the Standards are complete. These assessments come from two consortia funded by the federal government (“Next Generation Assessment Systems Proposed Under the Race to the Top Program,” Center for K – 12 Assessment & Performance Management; “Common State Assessments,” ETS). 

Best Resource for Common Core Assessments
Center for K-12 Assessments

Assessment Types for Transition Consideration
Current Readings in Common Core Assessments 
  • Joaquin R. Tamayo, Assessment 2.0:  “Next Generation” Comprehensive Assessment Systems, The Aspen Institute, December 2010.
  • Deborah Sigman, What’s Next: Assessment and Accountability, Presentation to the CTA Good Teaching Conference, January 21, 2011
  • Next Generation Assessment Systems Proposed Under the Race to the Top Program, Center for K-12 Assessment and Performance Management, 2010. 

Performance assessment refers to new assessment techniques that require students to construct a response to an open-ended problem or task. In the case of both traditional and performance assessment, the task and the assessment should be closely aligned to the common core. By emphasizing required achievements, the new Core Common Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and schools to determine how goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of meta-cognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the standards.

The designer must select the performance modes that the task will require, such as developing a reasonable argument, how data will be collected, how issue analysis will be constructed and what elements of cause and effect will be portrayed within the core content. The designer must also decide how the students will participate in performing the task, for example, if the task is a 21st Century task involving technology or a classroom task that is assigned individually, in pairs, or in small groups.  What is imperative in the process of assessment design is that the same level of expectations are followed as they are matched to key questions of quality that should include the following; 

  • Are the assessments representative of appropriate rigor and expectations?
  • Are multiple types of assessments available?
  • Does the material include application-level assessment as well as developmental level?
  • Does the material provide guidance to teachers regarding the integration of assessment into classrooms?
  • Are the purposes of the assessments clear, measurable and usable?


Direct link to "Guide to Developing Performance Assessments"

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