In this paper, Linda Darling-Hammond and Beverly Falk describe evidence of how student-performance assessments support teachers' learning from the United States and around the world, particularly in countries that have been recognized for their high-performing educational systems. The authors discuss how teachers’ engagement with performance assessment influences their understanding of standards and their students’ abilities. This discussion includes comments from teachers about their experiences with performance assessments from interviews conducted for this report as well as previously published research.
Finally, this paper includes recommendations of how these kinds of performance-assessment opportunities can be implemented and scaled up as states and districts implement college and career-ready standards and deepen their efforts to teach 21st-century skills.
