Quality Performance Assessment

Many districts and schools today are far too driven by high-stakes standardized testing, often to the detriment of our diverse student population. Performance assessments allow all students to demonstrate what they know and can do through real-world application. Our Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) is a new generation of processes and tools that leverage assessment as an essential tool of educational equity and teaching. The QPA framework guides educators in creating meaningful and complex learning experiences in the classroom, preparing graduates for college, career, and beyond. To guide your own design, take a look at our Performance Assessment blueprints.

Quality Performance Assessment takes educators through the process of creating valid and reliable performance assessments—defined as multi-step, fair tasks with clear criteria, expectations, and processes that enable students to interact with meaningful content and that measure how well a student transfers knowledge and applies complex skills and dispositions to create or refine an original product and/or solution.

Addressing achievement gaps and promoting equity in education.

The QPA assessment model is culturally responsive, allowing more than one way for students to respond to intellectual challenges, and respecting differences in backgrounds and learning styles.

Supporting educators and promoting collaboration.

The QPA process creates a collective understanding of assessment goals, of quality standards, and of desired outcomes. The process establishes a level of empowerment and trust in educators to develop assessments that are sensitive to all students’ needs.

Accurately and reliably measuring student performance.

With agreed-upon learning goals in place, teachers begin to create and implement assessments that are accompanied by clear criteria, expectations and processes. These criteria are created with the help of parents, the community, and students.

How We Can Support You

CCE team members help educators learn and customize the QPA process, design common practices, and establish shared accountability for results. We offer a range of services that can be customized to your needs (including workshops, institutes, coaching sessions, leadership training, and online learning modules) and encourage sustained relationships with our partners to ensure the greatest impact.

Performance Assessment Design

We guide educators through the process of developing the different components of a performance assessment (curriculum planning documents, rubrics, and student and teacher directions) and ensuring that the assessment has evidence of aligned standards, an authentic audience, clear directions, text complexity, effective format, and clear expectations.

Rubric System Design and Alignment

We support teachers in creating clear criteria and expectations for proficient student performance on a performance assessment, and then building a rubric that provides a consistent and fair evaluation of student work. Rubrics are critical tools for communicating to students what is expected in terms of the quality of their work and how it will be evaluated.

Calibration and Anchor Selection

Our team helps schools, districts, or states develop guidelines and processes for collecting, scoring, and analyzing student work. We facilitate a calibration process that ensures reliable scoring of performance assessments across grades and subjects and help select anchor papers that illustrate what student work looks like at different levels of proficiency.

Assessment Mapping

We facilitate an audit of assessments utilized by a school to ensure there is coherence across grades and subjects and that there are multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning and exercise their own voice and choice.

Capstone and Portfolio Design

We support the design of systems that offer students the opportunity to apply their learning at culminating moments. Capstone projects typically include a product, presentation, and reflection in which students express their learning through their own passions and interests. Portfolios guide students to analyze and synthesize their learning as they present a curated collection of artifacts demonstrating achievement of required knowledge and skills.

Community of Practice Development

The QPA process is dependent on collaborative practices in order to develop assessment literate practitioners. We support the design and implementation of effective communities of practice among educators and build the skills of collaboration and group facilitation.

Vision of a Graduate

We work with faculty to develop school-wide expectations about the understandings, skills, and habits graduates should develop and be able to demonstrate when they graduate (from elementary, middle, or high school), and align these expectations with the school's vision.

Competency Design

We help design practices including anytime-anywhere learning, community-based and workplace-based learning (community service, internships), project-based learning, and strategies for flexible grouping. Competency-based education opens up possibilities for new spaces for teaching and learning.

Policy Advisory

We partner with districts and states to impact change around important policies related to measuring student progress. The QPA team offers support in planning efforts to design policy, creating systems to develop assessment literacy including through educator micro-credentials, and piloting common performance assessments. Our research team conducts evaluation and research, resulting in policy papers.

Core Offerings
Performance Assessment Design	Rubric System Design and Alignment	Calibration and Anchor Selection
Assessment Mapping	Capstone and Portfolio Design	Community of Practice Development
Vision of a Graduate	Competency Design	Policy Advisory

Featured

Video

Performance Assessment for Learning Micro-credentials

October 12, 2017

In March 2016, CCE partnered with the Assessment for Learning Project to create and pilot our Performance Assessment for Learning Micro-credentials. The first year of the pilot in Rhode Island demonstrated that the micro-credentials and their processes were valued. Watch the video to hear from Rhode Island educators.

Follow these links to view our four stacks of micro-credentials: Basic Performance Assessment Design, Advanced Performance Assessment Design, Leading a Performance Assessment Community, and Performance Assessment for Equity.

Guide

Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts

2012

Category: Performance Assessment

Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts, published by CCE in 2012, looks at the process of making performance assessments that are rigorous, valid, and reliable and, at the same time, relevant and engaging for students. The guide leads readers through the process by using tools, protocols, and case studies that showcase various entry points and experiences.

Chapter 1 demonstrates how performance assessment at the school, district, and state levels can be a driver of professional development and student achievement. Chapters 2 through 5 provide a road map to the QPA Framework. Chapter 5 concludes with an examination of the power of networks of educators using performance assessments collaboratively.

Request a Free QPA Guide