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One Size Does Not Fit All

Components

Rubrics

PAR Board

The Center For Inquiry

Forms and Charts

Components

Schools need seven components to implement the performance based assessment system

Active learning:

  • Discussion-based classrooms
  • Project-based assignments
  • Original research and experiment design
  • Student choice embedded in course work
Formative and summative documentation:
  • Transcripts of previous school history including attendance and grades
  • An intake process that includes interview and writing samples
  • Cumulative documentation: attendance, course performance, tests
  • Student reports
  • Parent teacher conferences
  • Staff review of work patterns and work products
Strategies for corrective action:
  • Feedback on written work
  • Narrative reports
  • Student teacher conferences
  • Parent teacher conferences
  • After-school homework labs
  • Peer tutoring
Multiple ways for students to express and exhibit learning:
  • Writing: literary essays, research papers, playwriting, poetry, lyrics
  • Oral presentations: discussions, debate, poetry reading, dramatic presentation, external presentations
  • Artistic renderings: sculpture, painting, drawing, photography
Graduation level performance-based tasks aligned with Learning Standards:
  • Analytic literary essay
  • Social studies research paper
  • Original science experiment
  • Application of higher level mathematics
External evaluators of student work:
  • Experts in various disciplines (such as writers, scientists, historians)
  • Other interested evaluators (such as teachers from other schools)
  • PAR Board members
A focus on professional development:
  • School-based and center-based workshops which strengthen inquiry-based teaching
  • Sessions reviewing student work and teacher assignments
  • Opportunities to critique student presentations and scoring procedures
  • Mentoring of less experienced teachers by master teachers
  • Refining rubrics and reviewing performance assessment processes
  • Support for school-based research



Roseanne DeFabbio, the state Education Department's assistant commissioner for curriculum, said the changes on the Regents exams were covered by the "fair use" doctrine in copyright law, allowed because the altered passages were used for testing purposes and were not published.

Including the edited passages, she added, introduces students to the authors and encourages them to read the complete works.