Performance-Based Assessment and Accountability

Measure and record student learning to inform programmatic and instructional decision-making.

School leaders, including teachers, set program and instruction goals for decision-making starting with community/parent survey/input, administrative-peer-teacher and student feedback, and assessment of student data. Available information is also used to plan for placement and balanced classrooms―balanced by gender, SES, language dominance, proficiency levels. Student data are recorded through performance assessments consisting of any form of measurement in which the student constructs a response orally or in writing (O’Malley & Valdez Pierce, 1996).

Some of the characteristics of performance-based assessment and accountability are the setting of a criteria that are made known in advance. Ideally, the criteria should be collaboratively developed with local families, and community/tribal members. Further, students can be active learners by helping set the criteria and using the criteria in the self-assessing their own performance.

Indicators of Performance-Based Assessment and Accountability

The educator:

  1. measures student progress through various forms of performance-based assessment and accountability, such as:
    1. utilizing the Oral Dine language assessment (ODLA), district level assessments, teacher-made assessment, portfolios, projects, and rubrics;
    2. utilizing the Woodcock-Muñoz, IPT, LAS Links, and other Spanish home language assessments;
    3. WIDA ACCESS English language proficiency assessment;
    4. developing holistic biliteracy common language assessments;
    5. conducting formative assessments in the form of teacher observations, anecdotal notes, writing, pair/share, and exit cards;
    6. integrating language skills and content across content areas;
    7. putting up class progress charts toward individual and collective goals;
    8. utilizing Response To Intervention (RTI) plans to measure student achievement;
    9. strongly recommending teacher and student conferencing about editing students drafts before publishing the text;
    10. circulating the room and providing feedback when needed in order for students to better understand the purpose of the activity (checking for understanding in both languages);
    11. using multiple ways of mining data to inform instruction (such as weekly teacher collaboration), and, for example, monitoring their students’ literacy progress to inform their literacy instruction, and
    12. assessment student progress through teacher observation, student self-assessment, computer-assisted learning and data folders.