A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Assessment of Student Performance April 1997

PREFACE

Studies of Education Reform: Assessment of Student Performance is the result of a research project conducted by Pelavin Research Institute (PRI), an affiliate of the American Institutes for Research (AIR), under a contract with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U. S. Department of Education (Contract Number RR91172004). In 1991, OERI issued a request for proposals entitled "Studies of Education Reform." Twelve studies were incorporated under this general heading, each reflecting some aspect of the reform movement that had placed education at the forefront of the national agenda in the late 1980s. PRI was awarded a three-year contract to study assessment reform, which we interpreted to mean the contribution of performance-based, non-multiple choice assessments to education reform.

Contractors for all 12 reform studies were required to hold a national conference within the initial year of their study and to commission papers on important aspects of the reform topic. PRI, in collaboration with the OERI study of curriculum reform (conducted by Ronald Anderson of the University of Colorado), held a national conference on performance assessment and curriculum reform as a pre-session to the Annual Student Assessment Conference, organized by the Education Commission of the States, in Boulder, Colorado, in June of 1992. The assessment component of the pre-session conference included discussions of the content of nine commissioned papers that are to appear in the book, Implementing Performance Assessments: Promises, Problems, and Challenges (Kane & Mitchell, in press).¹ The papers, the conference attendees' insights, and OERI's research questions helped us refine our study's intellectual and methodological framework.

The larger and more significant context for this study was the increasing commitment across the nation to performance assessment as a reform strategy. For example, California spearheaded the reform movement with statewide open-ended mathematics assessments in the late 1980s, and Vermont followed suit with its first, statewide portfolio assessments. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, other states, districts, and schools also began developing and implementing performance-based assessments.

In the subsequent two years, we visited 16 schools across the country (of which we revisited seven) that were participating in the development or implementation of performance assessments as a result of national, state, district, or local assessment reform initiatives. In addition, we presented papers based upon our initial study findings at the American Educational Research Association conference in April 1995, and the Council of Chief State School Officers' conference on Large-Scale Assessment in June 1994 and 1995.

This report begins, in Chapter 1, with an overview of the historical and contemporary issues related to assessment reform. Chapter 2 identifies the specific study objectives and provides an overview of the study design. In Chapter 3 we summarize the case studies we conducted of the 16 schools that participated in our study.² In Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, we present our cross-site analysis and discuss our findings regarding the key characteristics of performance assessments, the facilitators and barriers in assessment reform, and the impact of assessments on teaching and learning. Finally, in Chapter 8, we summarize the key findings of the study and the policy and research implications of those findings.

¹All royalties resulting from the sales of this book will be contributed to the Leigh Burstein Memorial Fund, administered by the University of California at Los Angeles Foundation.

²Full-length case studies of these schools appear in Studies of Education Reform: Assessment of Student Performance ? Volume II: Case Studies.

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[Title Page]

[Acknowledgments]