![[Illustration from 'Mathematical World' by Richard Phillips]](pics/pic7.jpg)
Teachers are reluctant to use performance assessments
Summary
Our district is implementing performance assessment. This presents teachers with new challenges. It introduces a wider range of task types than is typical in classrooms. Teachers believe they don�t have the time to engage with these more complex problems. They haven�t had opportunities to learn to assess student responses, and scoring student work requires an approach different from simply marking right and wrong answers. How can teachers learn to
- embed high-quality performance assessments into their existing curriculum;
- use assessment to promote student learning and monitor and adjust their own teaching, and
- use scoring practices that value the broader range of students� mathematical performance that local and state standards require?
Strategies
Provide professional development for and through performance assessment
Professional development for assessment supports teachers as they prepare their students for a wider range of task types. Professional development through assessment uses performance tasks to deepen and broaden teachers� mathematical knowledge, and to support them as they implement standards-based curricula and link ongoing assessment with instructional decision-making.
Develop classroom 'assessment for learning'
Feedback is important in guiding any system. Classroom assessment can support students' developing more robust understandings of important mathematical ideas.