Examining Performance

Marie Cora
Editor
SABES Central Resource Center / World Education

Our last issue of Adventures in Assessment, Volume 13, examined some of the challenges the ABE field faces in meeting state and federal demands of accountability. Writers from that volume consistently noted the difficulty of capturing students' performance while at the same time striving to meet the reporting demands of funders. They noted that instructional purposes and administrative purposes of assessment often require very different approaches, tools, and documentation. In fact, efforts across the country are now focusing on trying to align these purposes.

Volume 14 continues to look at issues of accountability, but through the lens of capturing performance without the use of traditional tests. Practitioners take on questions including:

• How do we determine which assessment tools are appropriate for which purposes?
  
• Can we utilize performance-based assessment as a system of accountability?
  
• How can we capture students' knowledge and application of skills?
  
• How can we involve adult students
  in this journey?

These are only a few of the many questions we must answer together as a field if we are to build a strong and healthy Adult Basic Education system across our nation.

You will learn, as I did while putting together this volume, that there are many places where performance is in fact being examined in non-traditional ways. I also noted that in many of these places adult students are playing central roles of leadership. In this spirit, Volume 14 looks at non-traditional assessment in the classroom (where one might naturally expect to see more performance-based assessment), the program, and across programs, and in several instances, specifically highlights the roles that the adult students play.

The first article by Linda Suskie, reprinted from the American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, was written with a different population in mind, but the points she raises around fair assessment practices pertains to the ABE field as well and sets the stage for the ideas touched upon in the rest of this volume. Indeed, Suskie's Seven Steps to Fair Assessment can and should be applied to all stages of learning—from early childhood to adult education.

Two articles describe and critique oral assessments from two different ESOL programs in Massachusetts. JoAnne Hartel and Mina Reddy write about the OPT (Oral Proficiency Test) that was developed in their program over the past 11/2 years; and Betty Stone and Vicki Halal write about the BROVI, which they began working on in the Fall of 2000. These tools have both similarities and differences, and I expect the reader will find the descriptions thought-provoking.

Inaam Mansoor and Suzanne Grant of the Arlington Education and Employment Program (REEP) in Arlington, VA contribute their writing rubric to assess ESL student performance. They also describe the process
of developing and field-testing this tool with the guidance of the What
Works Literacy Partnership (WWLP).

Tricia Donovan, writing about performance assessment in math, carefully outlines for us that the most important part of examining performance is how it reveals a person's understanding of a problem or task. She discusses some examples of tasks that help us examine both students' knowledge and application of skills.

Mary DuBois describes her work with the Student Action Health Team
in Southeastern Massachusetts. This model for student learning and leadership development is highly participatory, and it incorporates a variety of performance-based assessments including conducting needs assessments, carrying out research, and delivering information in accessible ways to other adult students.

Early in 2001, the International Language Institute of Massachusetts
(ILI) launched a program-wide effort to develop an approach to assessment which would be consistent with their learner-centered teaching philosophy. Kermit Dunkelberg's article describes a process which involved their students in the research and critique of various assessment methods and tools.

Finally, Pat Mew and Paul Hyry write about the Western Massachusetts Assessment Study Group, which has been meeting since January 2001. This endeavor brings together a collection of adult education programs from that regionof the state to examine and critique various assessment methodologies, much like Kermit's group at ILI. Pat and Paul's group, however, is examining processes and tools that could be helpful across
all the participating programs. Again, both the content and process focus on performance assessment, but in this case, the students are practitioners.

In this age of education reform, adult education might be farther behind than our K12 counterpart, but our approach to education has always considered the ways in which less traditional approaches to learning and assessing might better serve students and teachers. We are innovative and determined. We are in a position to develop new contributions to our field that could forever change the way our work is done. Practitioners and adult students, working side by side, are already improving their classrooms and programs.

Several articles in this volume refer to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. These can be found at: http://www.doe.mass.edu/acls/frameworks/

Your thoughts and ideas are welcomed and encouraged. If you would like to submit an article or have comments, please feel free to contact me at: mcora@worlded.org

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 14 (Spring 2002),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 2002.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.