This report provides an overview of what was known about alternative assessment at the time that the article was written in 1991. Topics include beliefs about assessment reform, overview of alternative assessment including research knowledge, evidence of assessment impact, and critical features of alternative assessment. The author notes that in…

We conducted generalizability studies to examine the extent to which ratings of language arts performance assignments, administered in a large, diverse, urban district to students in second through ninth grades, result in reliable and precise estimates of true student performance. The results highlight three important points when considering the…

In this article we examine empirical evidence on the criterion, predictive, transfer, and fairness aspects of validity of a large-scale language arts performance assessment, referred to as the Performance Assignment (PA). We use multilevel models to avoid biased inferences that might result from the naturally nested data. Specifically, we examine…

A critical first step in developing training systems is gathering quality information about a trainee's competency in a skill or knowledge domain. Such information includes an estimate of what the trainee knows prior to training, how much has been learned from training, how well the trainee may perform in future task situations, and whether to…