Use performance assessments in conjunction with selected-response items, counting enough toward final scores to matter¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The report recommends that large-scale systems leverage performance assessments strategically alongside on-demand selected-response items, so designs can sample wider coverage while still providing substantial evidence of students' ability to reason and demonstrate learning in sophisticated ways. The key is striking a strategic and effective balance and ensuring performance assessments count for enough of students' final scores that stakeholders attend to the knowledge, skills, and abilities the tasks require.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Performance tasks must be standardized enough to reliably generate comparable student scores

Constraints¶

• The report describes this combination as what most systems are exploring, not as a validated optimum

Target Learners¶

• K-12 students in large-scale assessment systems

Target Learning Goals¶

• reasoning within and across disciplines
• deeper learning competencies

Related Strategies¶

• Reallocate resources from test preparation and interim assessments to performance task development and scoring as professional learning
• Rubrics

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Badrinarayan, A. (2025). Instructionally relevant assessment systems: What is the role of performance assessments? Learning Policy Institute. https://doi.org/10.54300/411.469