Access to excellence through new forms of student assessment

These discussions of performance-based student assessment provide a record of a decade-long exploration of unsettled issues in assessment. The first section provides the elements of a basic rationale for performance-based assessment, while the second section contains accounts of efforts to develop new performance-based systems in one city and four states. The volume closes with discussions of the place of performance-based assessment at the national level. The following essays are included: (1) "Access to Excellence through New Forms of Student Assessment" (Dennie Palmer Wolf and Sean F. Reardon); (2) "Can Performance-Based Assessments Contribute to the Achievement of Educational Equity" (Edmund W. Gordon and Carol Bonilla-Bowman); (3) "Authentic Assessment and School Development" (Linda Darling-Hammond and Jacqueline Ancess); (4) "Can Performance-Based Student Assessments Be Psychometrically Sound?" (Robert L. Linn and Eva L. Baker); (5) "Coherence, Assessment, and Challenging Content" (Marshall S. Smith and Jessica Levin); (6) "Coherence, Comprehensiveness, and Capacity in Assessment Systems: The Pittsburgh Experience" (Paul G. LeMahieu and JoAnne T. Eresh); (7) "Rewriting the Tests: Lessons from the California State Assessment System" (Bill Honig and Francie Alexander in collaboration with Dennie Palmer Wolf); (8) "Developing Performance-Based Student Assessments: The Connecticut Experience" (Joan Boykoff Baron); (9) "Statewide Portfolio Assessment: The Vermont Experience" (Richard P. Mills); (10) "Assessment and Accountability in Kentucky's School Reform" (Brian Gong and Edward F. Reidy); (11) "A Vision for the Role of New Assessments in Standards-Based Reform" (Roy Romer and Joy Fitzgerald); (12) "Standards and Portfolio Assessment" (Philip Daro); (13) "The Evolution of College Entrance Examinations" (Donald M. Stewart and Michael Johanek); and (14) "The Evolution of the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Coherence with Best Practice" (Edward H. Haertel and Ina V. S. Mullins). Individual chapters contain references and notes. (SLD)