Development of Differentiated Performance Assessment Tasks for Middle School Classrooms

If you are one of the growing numbers of teachers who know that you are compromising your best teaching practices in order to prepare students for state-mandated tests, you need to read the recent study by scholars at the University of Virginia. Concerned about the growing trend toward curriculum reductionism, where teachers alter the scope and sequence of the curriculum to eliminate concepts not covered on high-stakes tests, as well as entire subject areas (science and social studies being the subjects of choice at the elementary level), researchers at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented sought to develop differentiated authentic assessments for classroom use. These assessments were designed to provide data about student learning in regard to key concepts, principles, generalizations, and the thinking processes critical to understanding an insight across various disciplines.

While teachers have spent considerable hours rethinking instructional pedagogy, being exhorted to teach the "big ideas" in a subject area, to "uncover" not "cover" material, high-stakes testing continues to be dominated by traditional content objective assessment. The conflict is obvious. Teachers must compromise their ideals about what constitutes excellence in education. This, in turn, can affect their performance, behavior, and attitude towards school.

The assessments that were developed were differentiated performance measures that engaged students in real-world tasks and scenario-based problems. Rather than the passive involvement of traditional testing, these authentic measure required demonstration of important learning goals, not merely indirect indicators. Each assessment reflected the current understandings regarding the best practices in the area of motivation, cognition, learning theory, and instruction. In addition, the tasks encouraged divergent thinking and allowed multiple pathways and perspectives for solving problems.

Guided by rubrics, the assessment tasks, such as the "Fables and Folktales", invited students to develop an original work to be told at a story-telling festival in 2060. Students were assessed in six areas: purpose, sequencing, symbolism, word usage, expressiveness, and timeliness. The assessment, "Wall Street Decision", measured the degree to which students could apply math concepts and calculations such as fraction conversions, rate of change, decimals, and percents as they made critical decisions about stock purchases, as well as explanations about dramatic changes in the stock market.

The teachers who participated in this study observed that not only were students engaged in the assessments, but they enjoyed them and even seemed to learn from the process itself. The results of this small-scale study show evidence that authentic performance assessments can be developed to provide reliable and valid information about student learning.

This research, conducted by Tonya Moon, Carolyn Callahan, Catherine Brighton, and Carol Tomlinson offers a clearer understanding of the nature of the assessment dilemma facing our schools. On a national level, there is an ever-increasing demand for evaluation that provides quantifiable information about student learning. However, the current plethora of state and soon, national exams, will do little to give teachers high-quality information about student insight that is vital for informed instruction.

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