Performance-Based Assessment

Abstract

Performance-based assessment clearly represents an indispensable approach for assessing gifted student learning. Challenging performance tasks allow gifted learners to reveal their considerable intellectual capacity and energy. Through performance tasks, teachers gain insights into a gifted student’s true level of capability in a domain of knowledge. As the majority of programs for the gifted employ a project-based approach to curriculum, there is a real need to use a matching assessment model. Performance-based assessment, which includes product assessment, provides just such a match. Moreover, the new assessments for the Common Core State Standards use performance-based assessments as a main format for items as a way to judge the acquisition of higher level skills like developing argument. Thus, the incorporation of performance-based assessment in core content areas would appear a necessary part of designing effective programs for gifted learners and assessing them appropriately.