全球智库信息集成服务系统

This paper describes how teacher learning through involvement with student-performance assessments has been accomplished in the United States and around the world, particularly in countries that have been recognized for their high-performing educational systems. We discuss how teachers’ engagement with performance assessments influences their understanding of the standards and their students’ abilities. This discussion includes comments from teachers about their experiences with performance assessments as provided through interviews conducted for this report as well as in previously published research.

Finally, we recommend how these kinds of performance-assessment opportunities can be planted and scaled up as states and districts implement CCSS and deepen their efforts to teach 21st-century skills. Specifically, we encourage states, districts, and schools to do the following:

• Ensure that performance assessment is integral to the learning system.
• Include performance tasks as part of assessments.
• Ensure that rubrics for scoring assessments are clear and explicit.
• Involve teachers in collaborative scoring of assessments.
• Expand opportunities for teachers to engage in assessment.
• Provide teachers with coaching and professional development around assessment.
• Build communities of practice to inform performance-assessment work.

Teacher involvement in the design, use, and scoring of performance assessments has the potential to powerfully link instruction, assessment, student learning, and teacher professional development. The use of high-quality standards and performance assessments over time has been shown to improve both teaching and learning. As teachers become more expert in their practice through involvement and engagement with performance assessments, the outcomes for students can be expected to improve. If used wisely, this approach has the potential to address multiple important education goals through one concentrated investment. Not only will overall pedagogical capacity be enhanced, but also teaching and assessing will remain focused on its central purpose: the support of learning for all involved.

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor at Stanford University, where she founded and co-directs the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Beverly Falk is a professor at the City College of New York’s School of Education and a senior scholar at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, or SCALE.