ABSTRACT

Educational assessment in the 1990s looks quite different from the assessment practices of the past couple of decades. In the 1990s, more educational assessments are "performance based"; that is, they require students to complete tasks such as writing essays, conducting experiments, preparing portfolios, or providing written answers to problems. These new assessments are more likely to measure higher level cognitive skills than educational assessments of the past -or at least that is the expectation of many educational reformers. In fact, use of the term "educational assessment" rather than "educational testing" highlights two important shifts in emphasis in testing: (a) the assessment of higher level cognitive skills and (b) the use of a wide variety of item formats (Linn, 1995).