Ron Brandt's "On Performance Assessment: A Conversation with Grant Wiggins" discusses how a system of performance assessment should be established that will enhance learning and achieve its objectives of offering meaningful quantifiable scores. Essentially, Grant Wiggins (who was interviewed by Brandt) offers a version of performance assessment that can be used as a more accurate instrument of assessment than standardized multiple-choice tests.
First, educators have to identify a precise set of criteria for evaluating the progress of students. Furthermore, a scoring process also has to be established that match this set of criteria (Wiggins in Brandt 36-7). This component provides performance assessment with a degree of objectivity and reliabilityùone of the key aspects that have made standardized tests so popular among policymakers, educators and the public. Second, several judges should be involved in evaluating the performance of the students in order to ensure "high inter-rater reliability" (Wiggins in Brandt 36). Thus, the subjectivity of the grading of a single teacher will be reduced with the inclusion of other teachers' perspectives. Third, multiple samples of work from the students' portfolios should be evaluated for the assessors to obtain a comprehensive picture of the students' overall performance (Wiggins in Brandt 36). As Wiggins point out aptly, many people do not perform consistently. Therefore, samples of different pieces of work will provide an accurate picture of the students' true potential.
In response to criticism that performance assessments do not offer objective standards that can be generalized to all schools in the U.S., Wiggins argues aptly that standardization does not acknowledge the diverse needs of the students in the U.S. (in Brandt 36-7). Considering the growing diversity of the student population in the U.S., it is important to create an assessment instrument that does not seek to impose unifo...