assessment

This research paper finds that teacher candidates’ Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) scores, a performance assessment that measures their capabilities as future teachers, are significant predictors of their later teaching effectiveness as measured by their students’...

In this paper, Linda Darling-Hammond and Beverly Falk describe evidence of how student-performance assessments support teachers' learning from the United States and around the world, particularly in countries that have been recognized for their high-performing educational systems. The authors...

This article builds on Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger’s (2014) new paradigm on Accountability for College and Career Readiness by focusing on one of its three pillars—professional accountability.

The article begins by offering a conceptual framework for professional ...

In this paper, Karin Hess, and Jacqui Kearns describe how learning progressions can be used in curriculum development and assessment.  Learning progressions propose the intermediate understandings between these anchor points that are “reasonably coherent networks of ideas and practices...that...

Karin Hess defines Learning Progressions (LP) and outlines four interrelated guiding principles behind LP:

1)  LPs are developed (and refined) using available research 

2)  LPs have clear binding threads that tie together concepts with processes

3)  LPs articulate movement...

This full report defines Learning Progressions as well as highlights how this methodology can be used for curriculum development and assessment.  The Literacy Learning Progressions describe the specific literacy knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students draw on in order to meet the reading...

In this article, David Conley focuses on how to assess meaningful learning in ways that promote student achievement while simultaneously meeting system accountability needs.  This article presents a vision for a new system of assessments, one designed to support the kinds of ambitious teaching...

This paper is one of eight written through a Stanford University project aimed at summarizing research and lessons learned regarding the development, implementation, consequences, and costs of performance assessments.  This particular resource examines why the use of test-based accountability to...

This paper is the culminating report of a Stanford University project aimed at summarizing research and lessons learned regarding the development, implementation, consequences, and costs of performance assessments.  The focus of this paper is outlines how schools must teach disciplinary...

Envision Schools uses performance assessment as a key tool for supporting student learning. In this graduate follow-up study, Envision Schools puts its model of “Rigor, Relevance, Relationships, and Results” to the test, examining the results of a longitudinal tracking study to measure the...

This brief outlines how the Envision Schools Charter Management Organization and the Stanford University School Redesign Network have collaborated to design a set of performance-based assessments for high school students that are both rigorous and credible, and are designed to build students’...

This brief provides lessons for assessing new college- and career-ready standards, including Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), based on California's experiences with the California Learning Assessment...

In this paper, Linda Darling-Hammond and other leading scholars in assessment describe a set of criteria for high-quality student assessments. These criteria can be used by assessment developers, policymakers, and educators.

The five criteria include: 

1. Assessment of Higher-Order...

This article authored by Linda Darling Hammond for CCSSO, outlines the criteria for a Student Assessment System, which should:

• address the depth and breadth of standards as well as all areas of the curriculum, not just those that are easy to measure.
• consider and include all
...

This paper by Linda Darling-Hammond outlines how states can achieve the goal of making high-quality assessments both affordable and feasible to implement while strengthening teaching and learning at the same time. States that seek such a system can achieve their goals by:

• Understanding...

This paper by Linda Darling-Hammond and Ray Pecheone outlines a set of principles that are shared by the systems of high‐achieving nations as well as a number of high‐achieving states in the United States. These systems include the following:

• Assessments are grounded in a thoughtful,...

This report by Ace Parsi and Linda Darling-Hammond is intended to familiarize state boards of education with performance assessments and help policymakers address some of the thorniest issues around these assessments: purpose, sustainability, reliability, accountability, policy...

This paper by Raymond L. Pecheone and Stuart Kahl describes efforts by states to use performance assessment in large-scale state accountability systems and highlights promising practices that can a basis for broadening how the nation approaches assessement and accountability. Lessons from...

This paper offers a retrospective research study of performance assessment initiatives beginning in the 1990s up to today.  The study addresses three specific questions: 

• What were the conditions that helped sustain some of the programs? 

• What were the challenges that led to...

This paper is one of eight written through a Stanford University project aimed at summarizing research and lessons learned regarding the development, implementation, consequences, and costs of performance assessments. 

As the paper shows, the bulk of the costs for any assessment system...