Performance Assessments- An International Review

Linda Darling-Hammond is a professor at the Stanford School of Education.  Darling-Hammond is a strong advocate for performance assessment in schools, an assessment approach in which students are required to "construct and answer, produce a product, or perform an activity"(Darling-Hammond, Beyond Basic Skills)

Darling-Hammond believes that performance assessment is necessary because learning expectations are changing.  For example, 21st century skills like the ability to communicate, collaborate, and innovate are gaining priority and our assessments must align with these skills.  As our schools are under pressure to perform, curriculum is narrowing on teaching to tests and we are getting further and further away from these necessary life skills.

Other nations, specifically those that constantly out perform the United States on international assessments like the PISA, have a stronger focus on higher order thinking.  Their standards are defined as concepts, not individual tasks, leaving space for creativity.  Test scores are not used to determine students' graduation or rating schools, but rather to improve curriculum.  In addition, teachers receive extensive training prior to entering the classroom.

Performance Assessments are a natural part of learning in these nations.  Students design labs, create portfolios, and help assess their peers.  Finland has a national performance assessment in 2nd and 9th grade.  Sweden has a similar assessment structure, asking students to solve real life, open ending questions on their tests.  In both cases, and many others like Great Britan, Australia, and Hong Kong, teachers are involved in the creation and scoring of these assessments.  Hong Kong has even developed an online "bank" of performance tasks for teachers to easily access and incorporate into their teaching.

I strongly agree with Darling-Hammond's push for performance assessment.  Students learn by doing, and these assessments and tasks assure us that the knowledge we are sharing is being absorbed in a usable and transferable way.