| Criteria for Valid Performance-Based Assessments | |
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Criteria Ask Yourself |
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| Consequences | Does using an assessment lead to intended consequences or does it produce unintended consequences, such as teaching to the test? For example, minimum competency testing was intended to improve instruction and the quality of learning for students; however, its actual effects too often were otherwise (a shallow drill and kill curriculum for remedial students). |
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Fairness
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Does the assessment enable students from all cultural backgrounds to demonstrate their skills, or does it unfairly disadvantage some students? |
| Transfer | Do the results of the assessment generalize to other generalizability problems and other situations? Do they adequately represent students' performance in a given domain? |
| Cognitive complexity | Do the assessments adequately assess higher levels of understanding and complex thinking? We cannot assume that performance-based assessments will test a higher level of student understanding because they appear to do so. Such assumptions require empirical evidence. |
| Content quality | Are the tasks selected to measure a given content area worth the time and effort of students and raters? |
| Content coverage | Do the assessments enable adequate content coverage? |
| Meaningfulness | Are the assessment tasks meaningful to students and do they motivate them to perform their best? |
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Cost and efficiency |
Has attention been given to the efficiency of the data collection designs and scoring procedures? (Performance-based assessments are by nature labor-intensive.) |