Performance Task

This report offers practical advice to designers and implementers of assessment systems in competency-based environments. It addresses the challenge of creating summative assessments that are valid, reliable, and meaningful. While it is possible to achieve, creating a quality system requires thoughtful considerations of such features as grain size and learning sequences. A number of case studies presented.

This model Assessment Pathway was designed for Schools for the Future, which uses a blend of the Edgenuity Course Catalog and reDesign-developed Performance Tasks Guides. The model provides everyone in a school community with a bird's' eye view of the number of times students will undertake specific tasks within an individual course, department or school year/level, as well as across multiple years/levels, courses and departments. To work on creating your own Pathway, use our Assessment Pathway Tool (above).

One of the best ways to ensure that students have enough opportunity to master new content and skills is to develop an Assessment Pathway (also called an Evidence Map or Opportunity Map). The Pathway allows educators to map out when and where students will have the opportunity to undertake college- and career-aligned tasks. This prototyping tool provides a way for designers to begin mapping out the kinds of performance tasks students will undertake at each performance level, in each department, and across the school as a whole.

In 2013, reDesign scanned the syllabi from a broad range of college freshman courses from some of the most competitive colleges and from some of the most open institutions. The scan revealed that across the country, college freshmen are assigned a remarkably similar set of assignments during their first year (argumentative essays, lab reports, research papers, informational essays, annotated texts with reflective summaries, and mathematical models).

This paper examines five defining qualities of student-centered assessment and underscores its importance as part of a balanced system of formative, interim, and summative assessments that, taken together, provide useful detailed information to inform learning, instruction, decision making, and policy. Several useful student-centered assessment resources can be found on the bottom of the page, including a collection of videos.

This video describes how students can improve their work over time through concrete, specific feedback from their peers and with little teacher intervention.