The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), formerly associated with the School Redesign Network at Stanford University, provides technical consulting and support to schools and districts that have committed to adopting performance-based assessment as part of a multiple-measures system for evaluating student learning and measuring school performance. SCALE's mission is to improve instruction and learning through the design and development of innovative, educative, state-of-the-art performance assessments and by building the capacity of schools to use these assessments in thoughtful ways, to promote student, teacher, and organizational learning.
SCALE's areas of work include:
- Working with Institutes of Higher Education (IHEs), schools and districts to develop performance assessment tasks,
- Establishing and overseeing scoring procedures,
- Providing professional development to support teachers and students, and
- Conducting research to support the reliability and validity of the assessment system.
SCALE is directed by Dr. Raymond Pecheone, who has over 30 years of expertise and experience with performance assessment. Members of the SCALE team led the development, field testing, and validation of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), adopted by over 31 universities and other teacher credential programs to meet California licensing and accreditation requirements, and continue to administer the assessment. SCALE currently leads the national Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (TPAC), which is field testing a teaching performance assessment in over 100 IHEs across 26 states in 2011-12. Over the last eight years, SCALE has supported a number of student performance assessment initiatives, including collaborations with the Envision Schools, the Asia Society International Studies Schools Network, the Ohio Department of Education, the New York City Department of Education, the Gates Foundation Literacy Design Collaborative, the Hewlett Foundation's Deeper Learning Initiative, and the Council of Chief State School Officer's network of eleven Innovation Lab Network states.
SCALE has a staff with deep experience and internal capacity to provide technical consulting in performance assessment design and implementation, and also relies on partnerships with external consultants who provide content-specific expertise in the design and implementation of performance assessments, including the Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative (David Foster), Inquiry by Design (John McMillan, Dennie Wolfe), and Daisy Martin (Center for History and New Media at George Mason University). SCALE is also advised by Dr. Edward Haertel at Stanford University, Dr. Mark Wilson and Dr. David Pearson at UC Berkeley, who have deep expertise in the fields of psychometrics, performance assessment, and literacy assessment. Other departments and faculty members of the School of Education with whom SCALE collaborates and consults include: the Learning Design and Technology program faculty (Dr. Roy Pea, Dr. Daniel Schwartz); and the Psychological Studies in Education program (Dr. Edward Haertel, Dr. Richard Shavelson; Dr. Brigid Barron).
To learn more about SCALE, please contact us at stanfordscale@stanford.edu.
