Demonstrating Performance Based Assessments
Bay Area Performance Assessment (BAPA)
Project Summary
The Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) has launched a new partnership with Envision
Schools and Stanford Center for Assessment and Learning Equity (SCALE) to spread their
expertise developed in four Bay Area high schools to a diverse network of elementary, middle
and high schools. Teacher and school leaders are engaged in teacher action research to
design, implement and demonstrate summative performance based assessments that are
statistically valid and reliable, and can provide improved indicators of school performance
across districts and regions.
The Bay Area Performance Assessment program is planned to design and demonstrate
statistically valid and reliable summative Performance Based Assessments at the 5th, 8th and
12th grade levels. Seven schools were selected through an application process as part of the
first cohort that attended a 3-day summer institute led by Envision Schools and Stanford
SCALE, at the Hewlett Foundation June 22-25, 2011. The schools are: North Oakland
Community Charter School in Oakland, Digital Arts and Drama Academy at Castro Valley High
School, Emery Secondary School (6-12), Peralta Elementary in Oakland (K-5), Washington
High School in Fremont (9-12), San Rafael High School, and CiviCorps Charter School in
Oakland. These schools present their work, and provide leadership in assessment to larger
networks of schools in Region 4 at two Arts Learning Leadership retreats in December 2011
and March 2012, as a local application and extension of the previous CCSESA Arts
Assessment Colloquiums.
A second cohort of schools is being identified for the 2012/13 school year.
Accountability for Critical Student Outcomes through Ongoing Performance Assessments
Over the past decade, through Teacher Action Research Institute methodology, ACOE has built
a network of Demonstration Schools in which teams of arts teachers and classroom teachers
are using the Studio Habits of Mind (developed by researchers Hetland, Winner, Veenema, and
Sheridan at the Harvard Graduate School of Education), collaboratively planning arts integrated
lessons, and embedding visual and performing arts in the curriculum to meet core academic
standards.
The visible and performative nature of the arts, named and assessed through the vocabulary of
the Studio Habits—develop craft, observe, express, envision, engage and persist, stretch and
explore, reflect and understand the professional world—provide the means to see, explain and
measure how well we are preparing students with the necessary skills, habits and dispositions.
Through the use of shared professional thinking frameworks, new formative and summative
performance based assessments, and collaborative structures for decision making about
curriculum design and next steps in instruction, we are positioned to demonstrate, share and
invite others into a model for professional practice and shared accountability for strong and
more equitable student outcomes.
The Studio Habits of Mind have been adapted to Science, English Language Arts, and History
by AHA, an arts learning demonstration school at Berkeley High School, to promote alignment
and rich conversations among the school’s faculty so that teaching and learning becomes more
coherent for the students. In this way, and because the Studio Habits map onto “21st Century
Skills”—critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity—practitioners are moving
toward a definition of Student Habits of Mind necessary for all students to develop the skills,
abilities, confidence and enthusiasm necessary to be successful in school today and prepared
to participate fully, and flexibly, in the world they are growing into.
Background
The Alameda County Office of Education supports the design and development of performance
based assessments through:

Promoting teacher action research as the central component of professional
development, including the design of generative teacher research questions that
systematically explore what teachers most want and need to know about their students
and their practice, and about which they can gather information through observations
and documentation of what students say, do and make.

Developing observation and analysis tools, based on the Studio Thinking Framework,
Teaching for Understanding Framework, Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies, and
Making Learning Visible techniques, that guide teachers’ observations of and reflections
about students’ work and students-at-work, to help them analyze observational data and
make more valid and reliable interpretations and choices about instructional revisions.

Developing and refining protocols for collaborative teacher observations and
reflective conversations to help teachers support and serve as resources for each
other in their ongoing quests to improve their students’ learning by improving their
practice.
The Alameda County Office of Education’s Teacher Action Research Institute is a
professional development system that supports inquiry-based action research for more
responsive teaching and deeper student learning for every level of teacher and every style of
learner. This system establishes school-based professional learning communities that enhance
teachers’ skills in differentiating instruction to respond to every student’s diverse learning needs.
The Teacher Action Research Institute, grounded in nine years of applying research-based,
educational theory in classroom practice, helps districts develop a community of educators
effective at engaging every student in required content through contextually relevant and
meaningful application of new knowledge and skills, and assessing student learning through
summative and ongoing formative assessment.
To get involved and for more information, contact:
Louise Music, Alameda County Office of Education Arts Learning Coordinator
510-670-4557
arts@acoe.org
We welcome you to join our professional network!