Uses and Limits of Performance Assessment

Author: Eisner, E.
Publisher: Phi Delta Kappa
Publication Date: 1999
Journal: Phi Delta Kappan
Journal Volume: 80(9)
Pages: 658-660
Full text available online at: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/keis9905.htm

Abstract (written by WestEd)

"Performance assessment is a closer measure of our children's ability to achieve the aspirations we hold for them than are conventional forms of standardized testing," writes Eisner. "No longer will most jobs, particularly those that are the most desirable, require the use of routine skills and rote memory."

Learning theory has seen the virtual demise of behaviorism and the emergence of constructivism. Performance assessment moves away from students selecting a single correct answer that was memorized from an array of four or five distractors, to creating evidence through performance of the complex, integrated application of knowledge and skills in which there are alternative correct answers and levels of correctness.

There is a tension between two forms of education: the same standards, curriculum, and assessment as a "closed system," and diversity and individuality in an "open system." Performance assessments that are open-ended make school-to-school comparisons treacherous in a high-stakes accountability system, says Eisner. Furthermore, restricting rubrics (scoring guides) to quantity over quality is not the answer and moves away from the intended purpose of performance assessments. Perhaps, given competing notions about quality of education, there should be two types of assessment: a large-scale, temperature-taking testing to provide comparative data on the performance of schools, and an assessment that reveals the distinctive talents of individual students and the effects of school practice on their development. One focuses on the general, the other on the particular.