chapter seven
Performance Assessment
Consider the following three anecdotes, which describe common assessment practice in many classrooms.
1. Ms. Landers taught her sixth grade class a science unit on microscopes. During instruction, the discussion and assignments focused on the history of the microscope, how it helps scientists, and
its main operating parts. Using the new microscopes recently purchased by the school's parent-teacher organization, Ms. Landers
also taught her pupils how to set up, focus, and use a microscope.
She had each pupil use a microscope to identify and draw pictures three of four objects she had placed on glass slides. The pupils were very enthusiastic about the opportunity to try their skill with the microscopes. At the end of the unit, she tested the pupils' achievement by giving a paper-and-pencil test that asked them to label parts of a diagrammed microscope and answer multiple choice questions about the history and use of the microscope.
2. In Mr. Cleaver's third grade class, oral reading skills are
strongly emphasized. A great deal of Mr. Cleaver's energy is directed toward getting pupils to use proper phrasing, vocal expression, and clear pronunciation whenever they read aloud. All of the tests that Mr. Cleaver uses to grade his pupils' reading achievement are paper-and-pencil tests that assess pupils' paragraph comprehension and word recognition.
3. Mrs. Wilkes included a unit on cardiopulmonary resuscitation
CPR) in her eleventh grade health class. In the unit, pupils were
introduced to CPR and shown a movie on how it is performed. A
trained Emergency Medical Technician from the local fire department came to class with a practice dummy. After demonstrating proper CPR technique, the technician instructed each pupil in technique, using the dummy as an imaginary victim. Mrs. \\ tested her pupils' achievement on the unit with a true-false test of twenty-five items on CPR technique.
These examples illustrate an important limitation of paper-, pencil tests: they allow teachers to assess many, but by no means all, important school learning outcomes. In each of the classrooms just described, an important skill that the teacher taught and wanted pupils to master was ignored because the teachers relied solely cm paper-and-pencil tests. Ms. Landers did not assess her pupils' at to set up and use the microscope properly, although that was a skill she spent a great deal of time teaching. Mr. Cleaver emphasized good oral reading during instruction, but did not assess this skill formally. Mrs. Wilkes wanted pupils to be able to perform CPR, but tested only their ability to answer true-false questions about how they would perform it.
There are many classroom assessment situations in which teachers need to gather formal information about pupils' achievement of important learning outcomes by means other than paper-and-pencil tests. When the behavior that a teacher wants pupils to learn involves the performance of some activity like giving a speech, holding a pencil correctly, or producing a product such as a bookcase or a scale model of something, paper-and-pencil assessment techniques are not the best means to assess pupil performance. I gather appropriate evidence about such skills and performance the teacher should observe and judge each pupil's actual performance or product. Assessments in which the teacher observes and makes a judgment about a pupil's skill in carrying out an activity or producing a product are called performance assessments.
Performance assessments permit pupils to show what they can do in a real situation (Fitzpatrick and Morrison, 1971). There is a difference between knowing how to do something and actually being able to do it. One of the most important goals of schooling is to help pupils apply what they have learned in the classroom to real world situations. Rather than asking pupils to tell what they would do, performance assessment requires that they show what they can do. Rather than asking pupils how they would focus a microscope, perform CPR, serve a tennis ball, or tie a shoe, the teacher observes pupils actually performing these activities. This distinction between being able to describe how a skill should be performed and actually being able to perform it is an important one in assessment.
All teachers recognize the distinction between book learning and performance.
I want my pupils to learn to do math for its own intrinsic value, but also because math is so essential for everyday life. Making change, balancing checkbooks, doing a budget, and many other real world, practical activities require that pupils know how to use their math knowledge.
The kids need to learn to get along in groups, be respectful of others' property, and wait their turns. I don't want kids to be able to recite classroom rules, I want them to practice them. These behaviors are just as important for kids to learn in school as reading, writing, and math.
Just because they can write down a list of the steps they would follow to conduct an experiment or prepare a three-course meal does not mean that given appropriate apparatus and materials they could actually conduct it or prepare it.
Paper-and-pencil test questions often hide more than they reveal about the process a pupil goes through to arrive at an answer. Paper-and-pencil items provide pupils with verbal stimuli and require them to provide a verbal response. The teacher can observe the result of the pupil's intellectual process, but very little of the process itself. The teacher sees the answer and assumes that if it is correct, the pupil must have followed the correct process to get to it. However, the teacher has little direct evidence of this.
The essay item differs from other paper-and-pencil items because it does provide evidence about how the pupil constructed the response. The teacher can see the logic of arguments, the manner in which the response is organized, and the conclusions drawn by the pupil. We discussed essay questions in Chapter Six, along with all the other types of paper-and-pencil test items, but they are also a kind of performance assessment because they show many of the steps in the thinking process, not just its end result (Quellmalz, 1984; Stiggins, 1987). The aim of performance assessment is to permit the teacher to observe directly a process that the student performs or the end product produced by that process.
Table 7.1 shows the differences between objective test items, essay questions, oral questions, and performance assessments on a number of dimensions. Differences in the categories labeled "Purpose," "Student's Response," and "Major Advantage" illustrate the unique nature of performance assessments in comparison with paper-and-pencil test items. In paper-and-pencil achievement testing, the underlying processes carried out by pupils are rarely observable. Performance assessment, in contrast, requires that pupils carry out an observable process like playing a musical instrument,
reading aloud, or wiring a closed circuit. Since the process is usually made up of a number of steps, the adequacy of the pupil's performance is determined by rating the pupil across the multiple steps; this is unlike paper-and-pencil testing, where each item is scored individually.
Performance assessments require that pupils be put in a situation where they can show how well they can perform a process or skill that was taught. The teacher observes the pupil completing the task and judges the pupil's performance. A recital is a useful example that captures the sense of performance assessment. Regardless of whether one thinks of a piano, accordion, ballet, baton twirling, singing, poetry or tapdancing recital, the process is the same: individuals perform a behavior they have been taught and have practiced so that observers can judge (formally or informally) the quality of their performance. Like a recital, performance assessment has four distinguishing characteristics (Stiggins, Backland and Bridge-ford, 1985).
• Pupils are asked to demonstrate a process they have been taught.
• The process to be demonstrated is specified in advance.
• The process to be demonstrated is directly observable.
• Performance is rated according to an identified standard of adequacy.
Earlier we saw that teachers observe pupil performance to size up their pupils at the beginning of the school year and to obtain information about the moment-to-moment success of their instruction. Performance assessment of this type is an important part of teachers' assessment methodology. However, the observations that teachers make to size up pupils and guide the flow of instruction are primarily informal and spontaneous; they are not under the direct control of the teacher. The alert teacher simply observes naturally occurring situations in the classroom. Used properly, these unstructured observations can provide important information for assessment, as was shown in Chapter Two.
In this chapter, we are concerned with more formal, structured performance assessment, which the teacher plans in advance and controls. The assessment can take place during normal classroom instruction (e.g., reading aloud in reading group, setting up laboratory equipment) or in a special situation set up to elicit a performance (e.g., giving a speech in an auditorium, demonstrating CPR on a dummy). In either case, the activity is formal and structured because the teacher arranges the conditions in which the performance occurs and is judged.
The purpose of formal performance assessment is to obtain information about pupil learning so that a grade can be assigned or some other decision about the pupil can be made (Stiggins, 1987). In order to obtain evidence that will provide good decisions, the teacher must take an active role in planning, specifying, organizing, and judging the performance of interest. Moreover, unlike spontaneous, unplanned observations of sizing up and instructional assessment in which different information is obtained about different pupils, formal performance assessment permits each pupil to show his or her mastery of the same process or task.
This chapter will identify instructional areas which lend themselves to formal performance assessments. Assessment procedures will be presented, and problems unique to performance assessment will be discussed. Solutions to these problems which will lead to valid and reliable classroom performance assessment will also be presented.
Performance Assessment in Schools
There are many areas of the curriculum in which formal performance assessment is needed to collect information about pupil learning. Five general performance domains encompass most of the performances pupils are expected to master in school.
1. Communication Skills. All schools at all levels expect pupils to demonstrate communication skills, and assessments of the skills of reading, writing, and speaking are the most common examples of performance assessment in classrooms. Every time a teacher reads and judges a writing assessment, the teacher is carrying out a performance assessment of a pupil product. Most interaction in classrooms is oral, and behaviors such as oral reading, enunciation, speaking in complete sentences, phrasing, and fluidity of speech are assessed constantly. In courses such as public speaking and foreign languages, oral skills comprise the heart of the curriculum and can best be judged by performance assessment.
2. Psychomotor Skills. From fundamental skills such as being able to sit in a chair or hold a pencil to more sophisticated skills such as setting up laboratory equipment or using tools to build a bird-house, psychomotor performances are part of school life. When we think about assessing any of the following skills, we should think of performance assessments rather than paper-and-pencil tests: tracing, cutting with scissors, drawing shapes to scale, buttoning buttons, zipping zippers, handwriting, threading a sewing machine, lighting a Bunsen burner, dissecting an animal, wiring an electric socket, painting a picture. Artistic, musical, and dance performances are also made up of many psychomotor behaviors. Many 5ychomotor skills are taught in schools at all levels, and performance assessment is the best way to determine mastery of these skills.
3. Athletic Activities. Athletic performances that are taught in
physical education classes are amenable to performance assessment.
A good example is the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards. These
aids are given each year to pupils who demonstrate their physical fitness on a series of performance tests that include activities such as sit-ups, pull-ups, mile run, and standing jump. For each age level there are standards of performance which represent high levels of physical fitness. Each pupil is required to perform each of the tests, and each pupil's performance is compared to grade level standards. Pupils who demonstrate high fitness receive a Presidential Award.
4. Concept Acquisition. There is a growing emphasis on using
performance assessment to determine pupils' acquisition of the concepts they are taught in school. The main impetus for this emphasis
comes from dissatisfaction with paper-and-pencil tests for assessing
pupils' mastery of concepts and from complaints that employees cannot apply their school learning in the workplace. The argument made is that if pupils really grasp a concept, they can use it to answer questions and solve real life problems. If they can only repeat a concept from memory or answer multiple choice questions about it, they have not demonstrated real mastery of it. For example, after teaching pupils the concept of an open and closed electric circuit, pupils may be asked to examine some actual circuits and identify whether they are open or closed. Pupils might also be given materials and asked to wire a closed circuit. In shop class a teacher might give a pupil various tasks involving the use of saws and observe whether the pupil selects the proper saw for a given task. Rather than giving a multiple choice test on the chemical reactions that help identify an unknown substance, the teacher may give each pupil an unknown substance and have them demonstrate how to identify it. The assessment of student teachers relies heavily on performance assessment which examines how well concepts and procedures learned in the college classroom are implemented when the student teacher is placed in charge of a real class. The emphasis in each of these examples is on having pupils demonstrate their mastery of concepts in ways other than paper-and-pencil testing.
5. Affective Characteristics. Teachers constantly assess pupils' affects—that is, their feelings, values, attitudes, and emotions. While
pupils are not graded on their affects in the same way that they are
on their achievement in math, science, reading, or history, teachers do convey their perceptions of pupil affects through report ratings and parent-teacher conferences. When a teacher check-"satisfactory" rating under the category "works hard" and "obeys school rules" on a pupil's report card, the teacher has some basis this rating. When the teacher tells a pupil's parents that the pupil daydreams during class and cannot sustain attention on instruction for more than five minutes, the teacher must have evidence to back up such statements. Teachers rarely utilize paper-and-pencil tests to collect evidence about their pupils' affects. Instead, they rely upon observations. Behaviors such as getting along with peers, working independently, following rules, defiance, and lack of self-control are important performances that influence pupils' academic performance and the stability of the classroom society. As with oral communication, psychomotor skills, athletic activities, and concept acquisition, these behaviors are best assessed through teacher observation of pupil performance.
While the need for and usefulness of performance assessment cut across subject areas and grade levels, performance assessment is most widely used in early childhood education and with multiply handicapped special education pupils. Because preschool, kindergarten, and primary school pupils are limited in their ability to express themselves in writing and are still in the process of becoming, acclimated to the school society and its expectations, most information about them is obtained by observing their performances rather than by paper-and-pencil tests. (Almi and Genishi, 1979; Cazden. 1971; Goodwin and Driscoll, 1980; Kamii, 1971; Wortham, 199c
In early childhood education, instruction is focused on gross and fine motor development, verbal and auditory acuity, and visual development (Guerin and Maier, 1983), as well as social acclimation behaviors. Pupils are taught to do things in areas such as
Gross motor development: Roll over, sit erect without toppling over, walk a straight line, throw a ball, jump on one or two feet, and skip Fine motor development: Cut with scissors, trace an object, color in the lines, draw geometric forms (circles, squares, triangles, etc.), handwriting, left-to-right progression in reading and writing, and eye-hand coordination
Verbal and auditory acuity: Identify sounds, listen to certain sounds and ignore others (tune out distractions), discriminate between sounds and words that sound alike (e.g., "fix"-"fish"), remember numbers in sequence, follow directions, and remember the correct order of events
Visual development: Find a letter, number, or object similar to one
shown by the teacher, copy a shape, identify shapes and embedded figures, reproduce a design given by teacher, and differentiate objects by size, color, shape
// acclimation: Listen to the teacher, follow a schedule, share, it one's turn, and respect the property of others
There are other behaviors that fit into these five domains (Guerin and Maier, 1983; McLoughlin and Lewis, 1986), but these examples provide a sense of how heavily weighted toward performance outcomes early childhood education is. Essentially, the above performances are prerequisites to performing many of the more complex processes required to function in classrooms and master instruction it higher grade levels.
In reviewing this list of early childhood activities, two features are noteworthy. First, the large majority are best judged by performance assessment. Pupils are taught an activity and must then show how well they can do it by actually cutting, tracing, throwing a ball, coping a shape, discriminating between sounds, following directions, or reproducing a design. Second, given the pupils' limited ability to express themselves in writing, assessment of most of these behaviors has to be carried out with one child at a time, since it is important for the teacher to observe how each pupil cuts, traces, throws, or copies. Group assessment is difficult in preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary grades because many of the desired achievements of pupils involve a performance. This is why most reading groups in the first few grades are based on each pupil mg a chance to read aloud and answer the teacher's questions after reading, and why preschool, kindergarten, and first grade hers spend so much time circulating around the classroom observing and checking how each pupil is performing a task.
Analogous in many ways to early childhood pupils are special needs pupils who have multiple handicaps (McLoughlin and Lewis, 1986; Salvia and Ysseldyke, 1985). For pupils who are severely limned in their cognitive, affective, and/or psychomotor development, school instruction is typically focused on so-called self-help skills. These are skills such as getting oneself dressed, brushing one's teeth, making a sandwich, and operating a vacuum cleaner. Pupils are trained to carry out these performances through many, many repetitions. Observation of pupils as they perform these activities is the main assessment technique special education teachers use to identify performance mastery or areas needing further work.
In sum, performance assessment gathers evidence about pupil learning by observing and rating either their performance or some product they have made. The performance or product must be observable and involve the pupil doing some things other than thinking. Thus, listening to a pupil count aloud from 1 to 20 is performance assessment, while having the pupil mentally add numbers is not. Similarly, observing a pupil while he or she dissect a frog is a performance assessment, while having the pupil write list of steps to be followed in dissecting a frog is not. Performance assessment is appropriate to all grade levels and is especially useful in subjects such as art, public speaking, shop, and physical education which emphasize teaching pupils to perform certain activities and behaviors. It is also very useful with preschool, kindergarten and primary pupils, whose lack of writing skills forces the teacher t(rely on pupil performances to assess instructional success.
TEACHERS' USE OF CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
There are a few in-depth studies of how teachers carry out performance assessments in their classrooms, even though it is known tc be a widely used method of gathering information about pupils. The most extensive work in this area has been done by Stiggins and his colleagues at the Center for Performance Assessment at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Oregon (Stiggins, 1987; Stiggins and Bridgeford, 1985; Stiggins, Conklin and Bridgeford, 1986; Stiggins, Griswold, and Wikelund, 1989). The fact that almost all teachers report using performance assessment in their classrooms does not mean that they feel confident or comfortable about the quality of their assessments.
Over two-thirds of the teachers Stiggins and Bridgeford (1985) polled reported that they worried about their competence at formal performance assessments and about the quality of the assessments they made. Their concern was focused on two main areas: time management and the quality of the assessment process. Teachers recognized that formal performance assessment is a time-consuming process which can take time away from other important classroom activities. They also recognized that their lack of formal training in classroom assessment practices may lead to faulty assessment (Gullickson, 1986; Schafer and Lissitz, 1987). In general, teachers' concern about their assessment practices increases with grade level. This increased concern, which is observed for both teacher-made tests and formal performance assessments, may represent teachers' concern over the greater importance of grades and other official pupil decisions at higher grade levels. Overall, however, teachers at all levels expressed concern over their assessment procedures.
PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT 261
It takes so much class time to carry out an observation of each student doing some task or performing some activity. I want to see how well they can perform, but I hate to give up the instructional time to do it.
I never had a course in classroom testing and assessment. Mostly I go by common sense and intuition when I measure my kids' learning. I seem to get by okay, but I wonder how good and fair my techniques really are.
Grades are so important to my students and their parents. I try as best I can when I test my students, but no one ever taught me how to construct a test, write a test question, or systematically observe students' behavior.
Additional information collected by Stiggins and Bridgeford suggests that teachers' concerns about the quality of their assessments may be justified. Based on teachers' comments, it appeared that many components of appropriate performance assessment were omitted by them. A third of the teachers indicated that they (1) did not inform pupils of the criteria of a good performance before the assessment, (2) did not plan their scoring or rating procedures in advance of the assessment, and (3) had not decided before the assessment what level of pupil performance represented adequate performance. Even more teachers failed to write down their rating criteria, based their ratings on a single observation of pupils, and relied on mental recordkeeping to keep track of pupils' performance. Stiggins and Bridgeford correctly state that "because these practices can contribute significantly to the invalidity and/or unreliability of structured performance assessment results, there seems to be reason for concern" (p. 283).
Although one must be cautious not to overgeneralize results from one study, this one indicates that teachers do think about and plan for formal performance assessments. However, it also shows that many teachers, when planning and executing these performance assessments, ignore many factors that contribute to obtaining valid and reliable information.
This is not surprising. Classrooms are busy places with many activities occurring simultaneously. Teachers have many demands on their time and energy. Maintaining an acceptable "flow" of classroom activities is usually more valued by teachers than formally dissecting and assessing the specifics of the activities. Also, teachers as a group, from preschool instructors to university professors, have little formal training in classroom assessment techniques. They are forced to function with partial knowledge, and feel most comfortable with procedures that can be easily accommodated in their busy days.
Among the difficulties in conducting good performance assessments is the need to identify the characteristics of a good and bad performance before assessing. Also, a variety of problems can result from the observation and rating process itself, including subjectivity of rating, shifting performance criteria, and obtaining an inadequate sample of pupil performance. Performance assessment is also more time-consuming than group-administered paper-and-pencil tests, since each pupil must be observed and rated. Often, the behavior that the performance assessment tries to capture is fleeting and difficult to discern and observe. Finally, because paper-and-pencil tests are readily available, can be administered to a group of pupils simultaneously, and are easily scored, teachers often use them in place of performance assessments.
But there are many advantages and benefits to using performance assessment. One obvious advantage is that it indicates how pupils use information and perform activities in situations that approximate real life. Another important advantage of performance assessment is that the assessment instruments or procedures developed can be used over and over again, across classes and school years. Suppose, for example, that a speech teacher developed a form that could be used to rate the quality of a five-minute oral speech. The form might contain a list of activities the pupil should perform when giving a speech, such as making eye contact with the audience, speaking loudly and clearly enough to be heard in all parts of the room, changing tone of voice to emphasize points, presenting arguments in a logical order, and summarizing main points. Other activities could be added depending on what the teacher was most concerned with, but for this example, let us focus on just these five behaviors. A list of these behaviors provides a guide for observing the pupil's speaking performance.
Once the teacher has taken the time to identify and list the important aspects of a five-minute speech, the rating form can be used to assess any pupil's performance of this same task. That is, the characteristics of a good five-minute speech do not change from pupil to pupil, class to class, or even year to year. Similarly, the steps in focusing a microscope, performing CPR, reading aloud, shooting a free throw in basketball, using a drill press, or brushing one's teeth do not change. Once developed, performance assessment instruments can be used again and again. The effort expended to prepare the instrument is repaid every time it is used with a different pupil.
The performance assessment instrument has two additional useful properties. First, it is diagnostic. Because specific aspects of a performance are listed on the instrument to guide the teacher's observation (e.g., "Make eye contact with audience," "Speak loudly," "Change tone to emphasize points"), the teacher can more readily identify specific parts of a performance that need improvement. Thus, one pupil might fail to make eye contact with her audience during the speech, while another may not arrange his speech in logical order. Using the same instrument, the teacher is able to make a suggestion to each pupil regarding what needs to be done to improve performance. Second, the instrument can be used to chart the progress of a pupil over time. The same form can be used to rate a pupil's performance each time he or she gives a speech in class. By comparing performance from one speech to the next, the teacher can chart the progress of each pupil.
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