Alyce Barr
Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies
610 Henry Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Creating a System for Performance-based Assessment
How can I help the staff draw on our outside resources and build our collective knowledge of
authentic assessment to develop a school-wide system of performance-based assessment?
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The greatest power to influence student learning rests in teacher-designed formative
assessment, evaluation that is directly linked to curriculum and daily instruction.
When teachers use student work to understand what students know and are able to do, they
can also see how students think and how and where they become frustrated, confused, or
unsuccessful.
As they gather, analyze and reflect on their individual work samples and the body of their work,
students come to understand their own development over time and how their work
demonstrates mastery of specific learning targets.
Several factors made this an ideal time for BCS to refine and develop its performance-based
assessment practices.
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DOE Mandated Periodic Assessments When the NYCDOE began to require periodic
formative assessments, schools were offered the choice to use periodic assessments provided
by the DOE or to become DYO (Do Your Own) schools. BCS joined them in partnership with
the Center for Inquiry, the research arm of the NY Performance Standards Consortium. Most
Consortium high schools have a waiver that enables them to use Performance-based
Assessment Tasks (PBATs) for summative assessments, in lieu of Regents exams and as
promotional and graduation criteria. BCS hopes to eventually gain such a waiver and in order
to become eligible we must have the practice of performance-based assessment in place.
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Expeditionary Learning BCS is an Expeditionary Learning (EL) School.. Formative
assessment in EL Schools is communicated to students, staff, families and external monitors,
through the use of learning targets, which use simple declarative sentences beginning with “I”
to state goals for mastery, i.e., “I can make a pie graph to illustrate the proportionate ethnic
breakdown of a school population and can explain the percentages represented in this graph.”
Daily goals and clear learning targets provide a structure and vehicle for the implementation of
performance-based assessment.
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Ongoing Performance-based Assessment of Reading Using TC Reading Assessments
For the past two years BCS 6th - 9th grade teachers have also worked with the Teachers
College Reading and Writing Project.. Using short pieces of leveled text for students to read
aloud and discuss, teachers have determined reading levels and progress. These formative
performance assessments have enabled teachers to match students to appropriate books, to
see clearly the reading strategies they have in place and those they need to be taught. The
TC assessments have given teachers a basis for structuring guided reading groups and for
determining the sequence of mini-lessons for each unit.
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Gathering Information
 We created a series of questions about the collection of student work and the use of portfolio
assessment to understand whether and how teachers collect work, the kinds of work they
saved, and whether and how this work is assembled, evaluated, and shared in portfolios.
These questions were used to create an online survey (Appendix A) administered to all staff.
The link for the survey follows.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=wJSM9yKMJcXCgncclmijJA_3d_3d
 Teachers, administrators, students and other members of our community interviewed and met
with students and administrators in model performance assessment schools to determine how
they created the systems they use, what they find most effective, what they find difficult or
challenging and how these difficulties might be avoided.
 We compared what we learned from other schools and ongoing Expeditionary Learning
professional development to current practices in our school. Current practices were modified
to include what we learned from other schools and to make a consistent system for our school.
 We created Staff Learning Targets for the 2008-2009 school year (Appendix B)
Timeline
Summer 2007
 Review current state of BCS’s assessment structures
 Formulate questions regarding performance-based assessment
 Share goal of system development with assistant principals and with NYC Outward Bound
Field Director and School Designer
Fall 2007
 Develop Lead Teacher Structure
 Introduce Learning Targets within each department
 Begin EL Assessment Work
 Begin school visits
 Create survey to gather information about current practices in school
 Attend Performance Assessment Consortium Meeting and Center for Inquiry (DYO) meetings
Winter 2007/08
 Convert Progress Reports to Learning Target Language
 Continue EL Assessment Work
 Begin school visits, interviews, and participation in portfolio panels
 Compile survey results and samples of current practices w/in school
 Continue school visits
 Do DYO Moderation Study* with Doug Knecht (Network Achievement Coach)
 Work with Lead teachers and assistant principals to develop pilot system
 Share pilot system with Consultation Committee, SLT, Student Government, and grade level
teams
Spring 2008
 Continue EL Assessment Work
 Continue school visits, interviews, and participation in portfolio panels
 Do DYO Moderation Study with Doug Knecht (Network Liaison)
 Work with Lead teachers and assistant principals to develop pilot system
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Share pilot system with Consultation Committee, SLT, Student Government, and grade level
teams
Conduct pilot roundtables
Gather feedback from teachers regarding calendar needs for next year
Next Steps
 In creating a uniform school-wide system of performance-based portfolio assessment,
teachers will continue their move away from more traditional grading systems to one in which
understanding and application of concepts and mastery of skills is demonstrated through work
and projects that are tied to topics within each discipline. Selection of project and topics will be
based on age/developmental appropriateness, relevance to the discipline/subject and when
possible, relevance to student’s lives. Data will show increased course pass rates and a
higher graduation rate than non-selective schools that rely primarily on Regents and state
exams as their measures of success or failure.
 Expeditionary Learning has given teachers the language of learning targets and the use of
learning targets provide students and teachers with multiple means of proving mastery of a
skill or understanding of a topic. Performance-based assessment is an active and ongoing
process that takes place every day of the school year. Growth over time is in the students’ and
teachers’ domain and can be modified with changes in curriculum or additional work.
Commercially produced tests are externally created instruments that measure performance on
a specific day and time. It will take years to build and refine our system and, like all authentic
assessment processes, it will evolve as we come to know more about the nature of learning.
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Following are examples of the NY State Performance Consortium’s PBAT HS graduation level
rubrics.
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Appendix B
STAFF LEARNING TARGETS FOR 2008-2009
1. I can teach and model the Expeditionary Learning Design Principles across all environments.
2. I can collaborate with my Grade Team to design a weekly structure in Crew that includes:
 Sustained silent reading
 Critical thinking & numeracy activities
 Class meetings
 Community building activities
 Explicit teaching of student habits and study skills, including use of planner
 Daily check of tools for learning (pens, pencils, paper, etc.)
3. I can provide students with clear assessments and feedback on progress towards learning targets.
4. I can implement the following reading and writing strategies regularly into lessons:
 Cues, questions, and advance organizers to establish connections
 Modeling of reading strategies (text coding, visualizing, determining importance, etc.) to aid
student comprehension
 Explicit vocabulary instruction
 Process writing with use of drafts and rubrics leading to final product.
5. I can collaboratively design at least one learning expedition (interdisciplinary unit of study).
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Appendix A
Assessment Survey
1. Do you have a system for collecting and storing student work?
Yes
No
Other
2. I collect and store:
All work produced
Specific items
Nothing 3.6%
Response
Percent
Response
Count
89.5%
10.5%
51
6
6
14.5%
83.6%
2
8
46
78.8%
42.3%
41
22
38.5%
69.2%
20
36
78.8%
41
37.2%
16.3%
53.5%
16
7
23
3. If you collect and store work, where do you keep it?
4. If you collect and store work, how do you organize it?
5. If you collect and store work, what do you do with it?
- Review it with students
- Review it with the whole class
(students looking at each other’s work)
- Review it with colleagues
- Review it with parents and students during
student led conferences
- Save examples of exemplary work to
use with future classes
6. What goes into portfolios in your class?
- Teacher-selected work
- Student-selected work
- Combination of teacher-selected and
student-selected work
- All work 20.9%
- Completed projects
- Completed projects with drafts and revisions
- Tests 60.5%
- Quizzes 44.2%
- Homework
- Journals 16.3%
- Specific journal entries
- Reflection sheet for the pieces
- Cover sheet for the pieces
- Cover sheet for the entire portfolio
- Other
7. If a reflection is used, what format do you use?
- Written reflection (a sheet or open-ended)
- Interview
- Different pieces have different types of
related reflection
- Other
8. How do you/students use the portfolio?
- Record of finished work
- Demonstration of concept mastery
- Determining final grade
- One component of final grade
- Container for all work
- Includes final products and drafts/revisions to
show growth and process
- Includes only finished, best-quality work
- Documentation of student work that follows
the student from grade to grade
9. Students present their portfolios to:
- Panels of students
- Mixed panels of students and adults
- Panels that include adults other than teachers
or staff from your own school
- Other
9
51.2%
55.8%
26
19
34.9%
7
20.9%
44.2%
14.0%
20.9%
6
86.5%
0.0%
18.9%
22
24
15
9
19
6
9
32
0
7
1
74.4%
53.5%
25.6%
44.2%
27.9%
48.8%
32
23
11
19
12
21
14.0%
20.9%
6
9
44.4%
38.9%
27.8%
8
7
5
17
10. Is there anything else you can tell us about how you use portfolios or collections of student work?
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