0.4 4. designing performance assessments: a guide for faculty; gary  (Page 4/12)

To illustrate assessment burden, consider a curriculum where courses are organized around the standards categories themselves, such as offering a course called Teaching and Learning that addresses the indicators included in performance expectation 2 as shown above. In this case the assessment burden will be quite large because 16 total indicators must be assessed. When courses in a curriculum are organized by content or functional role, offering one class on instructional leadership and another on school improvement as shown in the example above, the assessment burden is likely to be less but still unequal within courses (12 indicators versus 5 indicators that must be assessed in this example). Although multiple measures enhance assessment validity, faculty should consider the practical aspects of how much time will be required to assess student work, and based on our experience, the time commitment is significant where multiple indicators are involved.

One way to reduce the assessment burden is to redistribute performance indicators or defining certain indicators as secondary outcomes in some of the courses. In the example above, using data to improve the quality of teaching and learning might be assessed as a primary outcome in the School Improvement course based on a rationale that the content emphasizes data and information management. The use of data to inform practice would still remain a content topic in the instructional leadership class but it would not be included in the performance assessment for that class. Once these decisions are made, the matrix should be updated to clearly communicate how overlaps have been addressed. Removing the “X” in the matrix row or coding the indicators that are designated as secondary outcomes would be ways to communicate where each of the indicators will be assessed.

This section briefly outlined a procedural method and provided suggestions for aligning and distributing standards within the leadership preparation program curriculum. The procedure ensures that students have the opportunity to acquire the leadership knowledge and skills associated with a standards document as they complete their academic work. Deciding how each performance indicator will actually be assessed is the focus of steps 2 and 3 in the design process.

Step 2: determine the assessment activity

The primary design challenge for faculty in educational leadership programs involves creating opportunities for authentic performances that allow students who do not serve in formal leadership roles to demonstrate their competence as leaders. The first task is to identify the key performances that are associated with each expectation and the place to start is with a close examination of the standards document and any available supporting material.

CCSSO 2008 provides a narrative description of each performance expectation statement along with a list of elements and performance indicators intended to link the generalized description of the expectation to the practice of educational leadership. Table 1 above listed the three elements associated with the teaching and learning expectation: (a) strong professional culture; (b) rigorous curriculum and instruction; and, (c) assessment and accountability.