Performance Level Descriptors

Performance level descriptors (PLDs) ¹ are ubiquitous in K–12 student achievement testing, appearing on websites of state departments of education, on score reports, and in test interpretation guides. PLDs define the knowledge, skills, and processes (KSPs) of students at specified levels of achievement and often include input from policy makers, stakeholders, and content experts. An uneasy relationship frequently exists between the content expectations expressed in the PLDs and the policy they are supposed to represent. This may be due to the way that PLDs are developed. Instead of being a conceptualization point that connects and organizes a state’s standards and assessment system (Bejar, Braun, & Tannenbaum, 2007; Hansche, 1998), PLDs are often developed immediately prior to standard setting (Cizek & Bunch, 2007; Hambleton & Pitoniak, 2006), resulting in PLDs that have neither guided test development nor been guided by the content of test. The consequence is that the expected KSPs of the PLDs may not reflect the actual KSPs as represented by the final cut scores.