Introduction

These six questions provide a framework for the creation and use of assessment, including performance assessment in science:

Question 1: What should students know and be able to do?

This is the question that leads us to develop curriculum standards.

Chapter 3 and Appendix A of this book.

Question 2: What kinds of tests and performance tasks shall we construct to see how well students perform?

This question leads us to plan a variety of instruments and strategies to collect data on student performance. Tests include the whole range from fact-level multiple choice to long-term research projects. This book focuses on the development of open-ended performance tasks.

Chapters 2, 5, 7, and 8 and Appendix A.

Question 3: How well should students perform?

This question leads us to the identification of benchmarks or examples of student work that show how well we think students should perform. We can set high goals by the quality of the models we use to define quality work. This question must be answered in your own classroom, school, and school district.

Touched on in Chapter 6.

Question 4: How well do students actually perform?

This question leads us to make assessment tools, such as rubrics and assessment lists, to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the work students actually do on the tests we give them.

Chapter 6 and Appendix C.

Question 5: To what degree are we satisfied with the quality of our students’ actual performance?

This question asks us to compare the actual quality of student performance to our expectations (high goals) for student performance.

This question is answered in your own classroom through your comparison of your students work and the goals you have set for the performance.

Question 6: What shall we do to improve student performance?

This question asks us to plan improvements in curriculum, instruction, testing, selection of materials, organization of classroom time, and professional development to improve student performance. Work on question 6 is most effective when done in the context of answers to the first five questions. This means that our work to write curriculum and plan instruction should be based on our analysis of the data that comes from a variety of tests and performance assessments of student performance.

This entire book is about improving student performance. Chapter 3 describes how performance tasks are both learning activities embedded in instruction and opportunities to assess student performance. Backward planning described in Chapter 3 shows how a teacher plans day-to-day lessons in response to the performance task(s) that will be used.

Chapter 3.