Thitirat Thanomsingh (tthanoms@lhup.edu)
EDTL 604: Unit 2 Introduction to Assessment Theory and Practice
March 26, 2007
Any assessment of student achievement is unlikely to exert significant influence on instruction unless some stakes are attached to its results or teachers value the assessment as an accurate reflection of what students know and can do.  Traditionally, we assess students’ understanding by the multiple choices or true-false testing that emphasizes only students’ memorization.  The performance based assessment became to be known among the educator.  Obviously, it does not emphasize on the paper test, rather it is used to examine students’ performance—what students know and understand to be reflected in their actions.  In this essay, I will compare and contrast between traditional assessment and performance based assessment.
Traditional assessment, teachers will plan some sort of test to determine whether a previously taught concept has been learned before introducing something new to the students.  Teacher will devote their time to prepare students to do well on the test.  This assessment focuses on completion or multiple choice tests which emphasize recall and rote memorization of facts.  Many educators have found that traditional assessment has led to a similar narrowing of the curriculum and students have had little opportunity to practice higher-order thinking skill.  The multiple choice test formats leads the teachers to give students practice in responding to artificially short texts and selecting the best answer rather than inventing their own question and answers.  They also found that the traditional assessment can make teachers’ instructional practices ineffective and potentially harmful due to their reliance on outmode theories of learning and instruction.
Performance-based Assessment-requires students to construct a more extensive and elaborate answer or response.  A well-defined task is identified and students are asked to create, produce, or do something, often in settings that involve real-world application of knowledge and skills.  Performance-Based Assessment is also called Authentic Assessment; this assessment includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated.  On traditional assessments, students are typically given several choices and asked to select the right answer.  In contrast, performance-based assessments ask students to demonstrate understanding by performing a more complex task usually representative of more meaningful application.  Performance-based assessment is contrived to the real-life, student will be asked to demonstrate proficiency by doing something.  Teachers often ask students analyze, synthesize and apply what they have learned in a substantial manner, and students create new meaning in the process as well.  While in traditional assessment students are often asked to recall or recognize facts and ideas and propositions in life.  When completing a traditional assessment, what a student can and will demonstrate has been carefully structured by the person who developed the test.  A student's attention will understandably be focused on and limited to what is on the test.  Obviously, assessments more carefully controlled by the teachers offer advantages and disadvantages.  Similarly, more student-structured tasks have strengths and weaknesses that must be considered when choosing and designing an assessment.
Even if a multiple-choice question asks a student to analyze or apply facts to a new situation rather than just recall the facts, and the student selects the correct answer, we really do not know that students exactly know the facts of the right answer.  At best, we can make some inferences about what that student might know and might be able to do with that knowledge.  The evidence is very indirect, particularly for claims of meaningful application in complex, real-world situations.  Performance-Based assessments, on the other hand, offer more direct evidence of application and construction of knowledge.  Asking a student to write a critique should provide more direct evidence of that skill than asking the student a series of multiple-choice, analytical questions about a passage, although both assessments may be useful.
These two different approaches to assessment also offer different advice about teaching to the test.  Under the traditional assessment model, teachers have been discouraged from teaching to the test.  That is because a test usually assesses a sample of students' knowledge and understanding and assumes that students' performance on the sample is representative of their knowledge of all the relevant material.  With performance-based assessments, teachers are encouraged to teach to the test.  Students need to learn how to perform well on meaningful tasks.  These assessments typically do not lend themselves to mimicry.  There is not one correct answer to copy.  So, by knowing what good performance looks like, and by knowing what specific characteristics make up good performance, students can better develop the skills and understanding necessary to perform well on these tasks.
Nowadays, educators, policymakers and others are turning to performance-based assessment methods as a tool for educational reform.  It has been noted that real-life problems often require people to work together as a group in problem solving situation.  In the process of Performance-Based assessment also requires students to work and solve the problem together as well as develop higher-order thinking, while traditional assessment has involved independent rather than small group work.