Performance tasks are the culmination of curriculum units that enable students to demonstrate what they know and can do. They are an extension of learning as students apply their acquired knowledge and skills in a real-world setting.
-With the increasing diversity of students in our public schools, well designed performance assessments provide opportunities to showcase the knowledge and skills of historically marginalized groups and cultivate skills for all students such as critical consciousness and anti-racism.
+Well designed performance assessments provide opportunities to showcase the brilliance of minoritized students and challenge all students to cultivate competencies for creating a better future such as critical consciousness and anti-racism.
-Performance tasks provide rich information to facilitate immediate feedback on what a student knows and can do. This data enables teachers to address learning gaps in more timely ways. A portfolio of student work derived from performance assessments within and across academic years provides an in-depth view of how student learning is progressing over time and how knowledge is building towards proficiency of content standards and skills.
- Read More About Free QPA tools and protocols
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+ Search and download QPAs in the MCIEA Task Bank
- Read the Research on QPA
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+ Create your own QPA with a Performance Task Template
- Speak with a Member of the QPA Team
+ Speak with a member of the QPA team
There are unlimited ways to engage with ECP! Here are some possibilities: +
District leaders can adopt the ECP data dashboard and use it to inform district improvement efforts. The district would administer student and teacher perception surveys, and the ECP team would collect all of the other data required for the dashboard analysis. ECP will also assist in the analysis of the data and its implications for improvement strategies.
+Districts may choose to build their own data dashboard using any components they want from the ECP dashboard, as well as any other components they identify as important to their own school communities. The ECP team will facilitate this customization process.
+For districts interested in joining the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment, ECP will build their capacity to make this possible.
+If a school or district leader wants to launch the creation of performance assessments across an academic department, a grade level, or a school, ECP will provide the guidance and resources to do this successfully.
+School leaders can administer ECP’s student or educator perception surveys as standalone data collection instruments. These surveys have been rigorously field-tested, and the ECP team will offer support in survey data analysis.
+The ECP team can assist educational leaders in developing team-oriented “walkthroughs” as measures of school performance, and support the analysis of the data collected.
+Individual teachers who want to use high quality performance assessments for their students can access any of the numerous performance assessments that have already been developed and validated. If they want to design their own, the ECP team will provide guidance and coaching.
+ECP is available to work with educators who are interested in developing their own protocols for data use in professional learning communities or as part of other school improvement efforts.
+If families and community members want to learn more about assessment and accountability, ECP will give presentations that can be easily understood by people who do not work in the field of education.
++ Our work together can begin with the ECP team talking with you or your group + about the need for an alternative approach to assessing student learning and school quality, + and about the free tools we offer. +
+The free and open-source tools are available to anyone for immediate download.
+Maybe you are an educator interested in trying out a performance assessment in your classroom. Maybe you’re an elementary school principal interested in understanding the sense of belonging that exists at your school using field-tested perception surveys of teachers and students. Maybe you’re a parent of a school-aged child who is interested in how to get a fuller story of your child’s school quality. Maybe you’re a district superintendent interested in how to use other DESE data, beyond MCAS scores, to advocate for the needs of your schools.
+Whatever your role, whatever your reason, ECP is making these tools available to you.
+When you agree to the open-source licensing (in which you agree you don‘t intend to capitalize on our tools), you’ll register with ECP. If you indicate that you’re open to hearing from us, we may reach out to you.
+We will work with you to build relationships between teachers, administration, districts, and community. We will provide support to use and customize resources to measure school quality and student learning in ways that reflect the values of your community. We can consult on how to use data to make informed policy decisions and how to leverage data to advocate for student needs. Your partnership with ECP will help you build capacity to join MCIEA as a member district if that is a direction you choose to pursue.
+When anyone in a district expresses interest in consulting with us or receiving support from us, we will reach out to engage all interested parties in meaningful ways with the project and project resources. We’re eager to work with communities who collectively recognize the value of alternative school quality and student learning measures.
+Whatever your role, whatever your reason, you can initiate working with ECP.
+ <%# TODO implement these links %> +Click here for more information on: + ECP SQM QPA (links to other pages)
+We understand that the decisions about schools/educational communities (i.e., policy, funding, school quality, etc.) should be based on more than standardized test score data
+We understand that the needs of each community vary & thus we value working alongside our community members to figure out how to tailor our resources to best support your educational community
+We understand or rather affirm that educational stakeholders (i.e., parents, community leaders, teachers, etc.) should be better informed (with accessible language) about the needs of their students or schools/educational communities
+We understand that the decisions about schools/educational communities (i.e., policy, funding, school quality, etc.) should be based on more than standardized test score data
%> + <%#We understand that the needs of each community vary & thus we value working alongside our community members to figure out how to tailor our resources to best support your educational community
%> + <%#We understand or rather affirm that educational stakeholders (i.e., parents, community leaders, teachers, etc.) should be better informed (with accessible language) about the needs of their students or schools/educational communities
%> + <%#We value agency and thus we believe that partnering with our project should be the choice of your educational community.
+Karalyn McGovern is a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in the Education Leadership program. She has experience in research and program evaluation, including work related to alternative assessment and measurement & accountability with the Beyond Test Scores project. She has extensive classroom experience as a high school English teacher for sixteen years, and, currently, works as an adjunct professor of Critical Reading & Writing at Endicott College.