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CCE staff and partner reflections on our collaborative work to create schools where learning is engaging and rewarding, and every student is set up for success.
When schools begin thinking about including more performance-based assessments in their classrooms, people often wonder, how do I get started? And how long does it take to do this work? As you find time in this busy end-of-year season to reflect with your colleagues, we’d like to share a change process and sample timeline from our Quality Performance Assessment Guide that demonstrates an approach to launching performance assessment work.
The first step is making the decision to build performance assessment literacy among staff and to use more performance assessments with technical quality. Think through connections to past and on-going work that you will build upon. Identify the collaborative groups that can be designated to take the lead.
A pilot group designs, implements, and scores performance assessment work collaboratively. The timeline could be a school year or a semester, depending on your goals and the amount of time provided for teachers to work together.
Plan the rollout for how all teachers can develop performance assessment literacy and implement performance assessments in their curriculum. Consider leadership roles for pilot teachers.
As you gain momentum and students become familiar with performance assessments, it is critical that school leaders and teachers consider processes such as student goal setting and reflection and metacognition strategies, and how students will present and share their work with the school community and beyond.
Design a continuous feedback loop after the administration of each common performance assessment to inform the work of the school and increase student achievement.
If you are ready to delve into this work over the summer, check out our QPA Summer Institute, a 4-day institute that brings all participants through the QPA scope and sequence with working groups where participants apply the tools to their own work.
If you are thinking about a different timeline, please contact us if you are interested in crafting a customized sequence.
Here a two short videos highlighting Summer Institute: