3. Assessment of Engaged Learning

• Performance-Based. Students construct knowledge and create artifacts to represent their learning. Ideally, students also are involved in generating performance criteria and are instrumental in the overall design, evaluation, and reporting of their assessment.
• Generative. The overriding purpose of assessment is to improve learning. To that end, assessment should closely match the goals of the curriculum; represent significant knowledge and enduring skills, content, and themes; and provide authentic contexts for performance. The performance criteria should be clear, well articulated, and part of the students' learning experience prior to assessment. Indeed, developing standards of excellence for learning and thinking is an important part of learning.
• Interwoven with Curriculum and Instruction. Assessment should include all meaningful aspects of performance. It should encompass the evaluation of individual as well as group efforts; self-, peer, and teacher assessments; attitudes and thinking processes; drafts or artifacts of developing products as well as final products; open-ended as well as structured tasks; and tasks that emphasize connections, communication, and real-world applications. Multiple measures (e.g., surveys, inventories, journals, illustrations, oral presentations, demonstrations, models, portfolios, and other artifacts of learning) are needed to assess "big ideas" and complex learning outcomes over time.
• Equitable Standards. Parents and students should be familiar with the standards that apply to all students and be able to evaluate the performance of an individual or group using those standards.