Implementing Performance Assessment: Promises, Problems, and Challenges / Edition 1

by Michael B. Kane, Ruth Mitchell

Overview

As the commitment to performance assessments as a strategy of reform has increased across the nation, so has the controversy surrounding the purposes, development, implementation, and effects of alternative forms of assessment. One of the first of its kind, this edited volume provides an incisive and comprehensive account of the issues pertaining to performance assessments. The 10 papers comprising the volume were originally written to establish a conceptual framework for a three-year U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement sponsored national study of performance assessments.

Written by leading experts in the field, the papers explicate the central issues regarding the development, implementation, and utility of performance assessments. The topics covered by the papers include:
* a discussion of contemporary as well as historical events in the performance assessment movement;
* technical characteristics of performance assessments, including reliability, validity, generalizability, and calibration;
* conceptualization and calculation of the costs of performance assessments;
* the implications of performance assessments on students who have traditionally done less well in American schools, including racial and linguistic minorities;
* the fit between performance assessments and organizational change in education; and
* the utilization of performance assessment as an instrument of state policy.

Readers will find the policy and technical issues covered in this volume to be useful from a variety of academic, research, and policy perspectives including conceptualizing and implementing performance assessments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805821321
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/01/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kane, Michael B.; Mitchell, Ruth

Table of Contents

Contents: Preface. N. Khattri, D. Sweet, Assessment Reform: Promises and Challenges. D.P. Resnick, L.B. Resnick, Performance Assessment and the Multiple Functions of Educational Measurement. M. Wilson, R.J. Adams, Evaluating Progress with Alternative Assessments: A Model for Title 1. D.E. Wiley, E.H. Haertel, Extended Assessment Tasks: Purposes, Definitions, Scoring, and Accuracy. R.L. Linn, Linking Assessments. R. Hardy, Performance Assessment: Examining the Costs. D.H. Monk, Conceptualizing the Costs of Large-scale Pupil Performance Assessment. S.M. Stiegelbauer, Change has Changed: Implications for Implentation of Assessments from the Organizational Change Literature. L.B. Easton, P.H. Koehler, Arizona's Educational Reform: Creating and Capitalizing on the Conditions for Policy Development and Implementation. E.L. Baker, H.F. O'Neil, Jr., Performance Assessment and Equity.

Editorial Reviews

"...perhaps the most significant point of all about this publication, is that it derives from government-funded research and has been produced in a context of open debate about genuine alternatives."
—British Journal of Educational Psychology

"...addresses questions of why new forms of assessment are necessary, whether or not the results will be fair and reliable, how change can be accomplished, and what it will all cost...the real interest for a UK audience lies in the differences the book reveals between American and British views of 'alternative' approaches to assessment."
—British Journal of Educational Psychology

From the Publisher