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Performance Assessment

Learn more about testing where students apply their knowledge to authentic problems and create a deliverable graded against specific criteria

Explainer

What Is Performance Assessment?
Here's a handy glossary on terms like project-based learning, competency-based learning, and standards-based grading.
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Interest is growing in assessing students’ learning by having them show what they can do with what they know. But educators often disagree about what terms like performance assessment and project-based learning really mean in the classroom. In an effort to clear up some of the confusion, Education Week writers developed definitions for six performance-assessment related terms, including proficiency-based learning, project-based learning, standards-based grading, and portfolios. See the results in this animated glossary.
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Alternatives to traditional testing aren’t new to schools but interest in them is resurging. What lessons did educators learn from the last go-around with performance measurement? What’s new now?
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Fremont High School teacher, Maya Brodkey, left, talks with senior Cristy Gonzalez-Hernandez about her senior capstone project during class at the Oakland, Calif., school. The district has had a policy since 2005 requiring students to complete a “serious research project or exhibition” in order to graduate.
Fremont High School teacher, Maya Brodkey, left, talks with senior Cristy Gonzalez-Hernandez about her senior capstone project during class at the Oakland, Calif., school. The district has had a policy since 2005 requiring students to complete a “serious research project or exhibition” in order to graduate.
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Griffin Walsh plays Kindville at Newnan Crossing Elementary School in Newnan, Ga. Some schools in the state, including Newnan Crossing, are piloting Kindville, a new formative education assessment program which looks, and plays, just like a video game, but will eventually spit out qualitative math and reading scores.
Griffin Walsh plays Kindville at Newnan Crossing Elementary School in Newnan, Ga. Some schools in the state, including Newnan Crossing, are piloting Kindville, a new formative education assessment program which looks, and plays, just like a video game, but will eventually spit out qualitative math and reading scores.
Dustin Chambers for Education Week
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Assistant Managing Editor Debra Viadero talks about the latest turn in education toward performance-based assessment and invites educators to the “Testing for Real-World Performance” summit on Tuesday, February 19, at 1 p.m. In this online event, Education Week journalists and guests will staff online “discussion rooms” on a host of topics, including: the problems and pitfalls of performance-based testing measures, ways to assess group work, alternatives to traditional grades, how some college admissions offices weigh performance-based measures, and video game-based formative assessments for elementary schools. You will get a unique opportunity to interact directly with the writers and experts who helped shape coverage of our new special report on performance assessment. After the discussions, watch writers and editors sum up the discussion in a series of livestreamed interviews.
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