Advisory Committee

JoAnn D. Bartoletti, New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association

Vince Giordano, New Jersey Education Association

Marie Bilik, New Jersey School Boards Association

Richard G. Bozza, New Jersey Association of School Administrators

Marie Adair, New Jersey Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Herb Green, Public Education Institute Center for Effective School Practices, Rutgers University

Mary O. O’Malley, Prudential Financial

Jeff V. Osowski, Liberty Science Center

David Nash, Esq.

Collaborating Partners

Jay Doolan, New Jersey Department of Education

Tim Peters, New Jersey Department of Education

Staff Members

Christine Kane, Director

Fran McKenna, Administrative Assistant

What is the New Jersey Performance Assessment Alliance Project (NJPAA)?

In 1999, an alliance of the major educational organizations in the state was formed to examine and suggest reform of the state's mechanisms for assessing students' mastery of the standards. The alliance was expanded in 2002 to include the BCEE [Business Coalition for Educational Excellence]. The New Jersey Performance Assessment Alliance is made up of diverse groups representing parents, educators, and the business community. In a report titled "A Call to Action" the Alliance offered a set of recommendations for reforming the states accountability system. The centerpiece of the report is the implementation of high quality performance assessments. The clarion call for including more effective assessments that are well aligned to the core content standards was taken up in 2003 with the creation of the Performance Assessment Pilot Project. The five - year project is devoted to reforming the current assessment system by adding a performance assessment component that is valid, reliable and developed on a platform of effective research-based evidence. (Direct excerpt from Devlin-Scherer & Walker, 2004, pp. 2-3)

The NJPAA Pilot Project began with approximately 160 teachers from nine school districts throughout the state that represented a cross section of the cultural and socio-economic diversity of New Jersey students. The teachers assembled for a summer institute to learn about performance assessment and to begin the intensive work of developing assessments for grades 3, 6, 8 and 11. In the course of the next year, the teachers implemented these assessments in their own schools, and then came together to create scoring rubrics and make needed revisions. The assessments were then administered to larger numbers of students throughout the state and the revision process continued. In the second year of the project more districts were added to the original group. By the summer of 2007, literally thousands of New Jersey students and teachers had participated in the project as assessments continued to be developed and refined.

What is the purpose of the NJPAA?

The following three goals are guiding the work of NJPAA (Flaim p.1):

• To assure a balanced and broader approach in the state assessment system, including state administered standardized tests and district administered performance assessments, with equal weight given to each for state and federal reporting and accountability.
   
  
• To foster the use of instructional strategies that lead to increased student understanding of important skills, ideas and concepts included in the N.J. Core Curriculum Content Standards.
   
  
• To develop high quality performance assessments that are aligned to the N.J. Core Curriculum Content Standards in each of the content areas.

According to Devlin-Scherer & Walker (2004, p.4):

[T]he primary aim of the Performance Assessment Pilot Project is to complement the state's existing assessment system through the incorporation of a performance-based assessment component. In addition to broader concerns about accountability, it is anticipated that the inclusion of high quality performance assessments will enhance local educators' and classroom teachers' abilities to arrive at deeper understandings of student knowledge.

Why did New Jersey Performance Assessment Alliance form?

Beginning in the early nineties a wave of assessment reform swept across the nation. Outcome- based education became centered on identifying the valued skills that students were expected to master upon exiting the public school system. Most states crafted these outcomes to reflect broad knowledge domains in the major content areas, as well as areas that were not typically included in traditional accountability systems. For example, in New Jersey, curriculum and performance standards were adopted in seven areas: language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, world languages, health and physical education, and visual and performing arts.

It became evident to states and educators alike that the traditional method of assessing student learning with its strong reliance upon norm-referenced testing failed to provide a seamless link between curriculum, instruction and assessment. Moreover, this assessment model was incapable of providing educators with information that shed light on how students understand, interpret, and extend knowledge. Performance-based or authentic assessments became the means for redressing the inherent limitations of traditional norm referenced models. Proponents of performance-based assessments viewed them as representing a "set of strategies that provide opportunities for the learner to apply his or her knowledge, skills and work habits through the performance of tasks that are meaningful and engaging to the learner (Hibbard et, al.,1996). More importantly, performance-based assessments were seen as strengthening states' accountability systems by creating a higher degree of congruency between the newly adopted curriculum and performance standards and the way these standards were assessed.

New Jersey's own assessment system has been evolving since the mid - 90's …More recently, the standards were revised and new versions were adopted in part in 2003 and 2004. The state's accountability system has three major prongs that represent developmental milestones of students' progress towards mastering the standards. These are: New Jersey ASK, Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment, and the High School Proficiency Assessment. These assessments rely upon a combination of item formats that include multiple choices and open-ended constructed questions to measure student knowledge. However, the assessments did not include a performance-based component, which has led to their renewed scrutiny.

What does the research literature say about Performance-Based Assessments?
Summarized from Devlin-Scherer & Walker (2004, pp. 7-10) as prepared for NJPAA:

The standards based reform movement was responsible for bringing performance-based assessment into the debate of the state's accountability requirements and what actually constitutes effective assessment practices. The research supports the use of performance-based assessment using three arguments. First, performance based assessments are thought to be superior to traditional norm referenced tests. In order to prepare students for these assessments, teachers will be likely to carefully align their instruction helping students to use critical thinking and problem solving strategies and to integrate knowledge across the content areas. (Resnick & Resnick, 1989) Secondly, the use of performance-based assessments are more likely to provide more insight into student knowledge and understanding than simple multiple-choice assessments . Finally, the tasks required in a performance based assessment are authentic and reflective the real world. As a result, such assessment is more meaningful to the student and more engaging (Frisby,2001; Wiggins 1998).

Evidence was found to support the positive effects of using performance assessment to improve teaching and learning in studies by Fuchs et al (1999), Borko et (1993) and Smith et al (1994) . On the other hand, Kharitti et al (1995) stressed that performance based assessments will not always result in a change in instructional practices. The research shows that getting teachers to change their practice is not an easy task. According to Stiggins (1991), teachers lack of assessment literacy makes the goal of developing new teaching practices even more challenging. Khattri et al (1995) did find that teachers were more likely to include performance-based practices in their classroom instruction when they were part of the assessment reform process itself. [With this in mind, NJPAA has been teacher-driven from the beginning of the project]. Teachers from across the state of New Jersey have been involved in creating performance-based assessment tasks, administering the field tests, creating scoring rubrics, holistically scoring students' work and most importantly using student work to drive instruction.]

There are no doubt challenges involved in creating effective performance based assessments. Concerns of reliability and validity as well as issues of cost and time for developing, scoring and administering performance assessments have been expressed in the research of Messick (1995) and Baker and Linn (1993).

Keeping in mind the technical challenges of performance assessment, many teachers are coming to value to advantages of performance based assessment when used as an alternative or complement to norm referenced tests. In addition, researchers have reported the potential of performance assessments to improve achievement for students of different subgroups most notably, English language learners (Pierce, 2002) and special education students (ERIC Digest, 1995).

References:

Borko, H., Flory, M. & Cumbo, K. (1993). Teachers' ideas and practices about assessment and instruction. A case study of the effects of alternative assessment in instruction student learnng and accountability. Los Angeles: CSE Technical Report 366, CRESST. (As cited by Devlin-Scherer & Walker)

Devlin-Scherer, Roberta and Walker, Elaine (2004) The Performance Assessment Alliance. Findings from the first-year evaluation of the Performance Assessment Pilot Project. Sametric Research.

Flaim, R. F. (2003) Improving student assessment in New Jersey: The performance assessment pilot project. New Jersey: New Jersey Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Resnick, L. & Resnick, D. (1989). Assessing the thinking curriculum: New tools for educational reform. National Commission on Testing and Public Policy, Washington, D.C. (As cited by Devlin-Scherer & Walker)

Smith, M.L., et al. (1994). What happens when the test mandate changes? Results of a multiple case study. Los Angeles: CSE Technical Report 380, CRESST. (As cited by Devlin-Scherer & Walker)