Smarter Balanced Item and Performance Task Development

Smarter Balanced (the Common Core assessment system California is part of) has released a series of training tools for those who will be writing assessment items.

Six types of tasks are described in their Introduction to Evidence-Centered Design powerpoint:

1) Selected Response:  Our students have been exposed to Selected Response items on the CSTs for years.  With the new technology SBAC will use, selected response items will allow for more than one correct response.  As can be seen in the following item, students are responsible for thinking about number of sides, angle measures, parallel side relationships, and side lengths all at one time.  

As can be seen in the example below, students will need to carefully examine all of the possible response options, because more than one can be correct.  

2) Constructed Response:  Now that students in California will be responsible for calculating and providing their own answers, publishers and teachers will need to move away from multiple-choice only classroom assessments.  In addition, students will need to learn to organize their work and their thinking to provide legible, complete, and convincing evidence to support their solutions.

3) Extended Response:  Students will need to developing their reading comprehension skills for this type of task, as well as their ability to work with multiple parameters.

4) Performance Tasks:  When a complex claim is being assessed, a performance task may be required to support the full range of the claim.  "A Performance Task is used to assess a set of assessment targets as opposed to a narrow focus on just one or two targets, as is typically the case with selected and constructed response items.  As an example, this performance task contains multiple parts, each designed to collect specific types of evidence that are combined to make a claim about student ability to read, synthesize, and communicate in writing."

5) Technology-Enhanced Tasks:  These tasks capitalize on technology to collect evidence through a non-traditional response type.  For instance, in the item below, the students will be using technology to draw a line on the grid -- the green line is an example of what the student might produce.

Additional examples of technology-enhanced tasks from the Mathematics Selected Response, Constructed Response, and Technology-Enhanced Items powerpoint

6) Technology-Enabled Tasks:  These tasks incorporate multi-media or other interactive elements in the assessment target -- what the student sees/hears before they respond.  The students will then respond to this type of task by either selecting one or more responses or by producing text or numerals.  In this task, the students are able to use a dynamic geometry environment to construct the desired floor.  Once a student is satisfied, he can then type in the response to the question.

With more SBAC assessment examples available, teachers will definitely want to think about their own assessment practices.  Some issues that quickly come to mind include:

• Preparing students for multiple correct answer selected response tasks
• Preparing students to check for accuracy before answering constructed response tasks
• Preparing students to show their work and explain their reasoning in constructed, extended, and performance tasks
• Preparing students for the reading and writing academic language demands
• Providing students with dynamic geometry and graphing technology experiences, as well as spreadsheet experiences (based on sample items that I've seen so far).  
• Ensuring that students have ongoing experiences with visual representations of mathematics concepts and operations

As you think of additional issues that relate to teacher assessment practices, please share them in the comments below.

Thanks for all that you do for students!