Performance Task Questions

1) What is a Performance Task?
A Performance Task requires a student to create, manipulate or re-work intellectual academic content in a practical and authentic performance that demonstrates student learning. Some examples of performance assessment tasks include written compositions, scene work, speeches, works of art, science fair projects, research projects, dramaturgy, musical performances, open-ended math problems, and analysis and interpretation of a play the student has read.

2) What is a Performance Task’s objective?
To help the teacher see tangible evidence of student learning progress toward the level of standards for what students should know and are able to do.

3) What does a good Performance Task accomplish?
Provides immediate, tangible, and practical demonstration of student learning.

4) What is a good Performance Task design?
A rigorous Performance Task is a structured model for student assessment where student learning can be judged by the task and by the standards or criteria organized in a rubric.

5) Does every student have to do a Performance Task?
Yes. A Performance Task should be used with every student, as every student expects to demonstrate their achievement.  Instead of a standardized answer, performance tasks give each student a unique way to demonstrate achievement of standards. The rigor and accountability for achieving learning is controlled by the quality assessed on the rubric.

6) What is a valid and reliable Performance Task?
Validity is established when the assessment instrument measures what it is supposed to measure, e.g., content, skills, knowledge. Reliability is when the assessment instrument measures the content, skills, and knowledge accurately across students, classes, schools, etc.

7) What type of results do you get with Performance Tasks?
Performance Tasks answer questions of learning standards: what can students do with their knowledge? Results are framed around the levels of rubric achievement. For example, some students may achieve a beginning level of audition performance. Some students will achieve the level of competent audition, and some students may achieve a level of sophisticated audition performance.

8) What is a good Performance Task report?
A short, concise document that both reveals and shows the most important results. For example, out of 12 students, “all achieved credible endings to their re-writes of the ending of King Lear. I saw one student, James, take great pleasure in re-writing the ending of King Lear. His ending clearly demonstrated that he understood the play, the structure of tragedy, and why his ending would fit given what had happened earlier in the play. Additionally, his ending was creatively unique by picking up the thread of both sibling rivalry story lines, and weaving them together.” (Adapted from Fink 2003)

Performance Task Template (MS Word)

Monologue Task 1 (MS Word)

Monologue Task 2 (MS Word)

Dramaturgy Task (MS Word)

Interdisciplinary Template: State Standards (MS Word)

Interdisciplinary Template: National Standards (MS Word)

Interdisciplinary Template: Generic (MS Word)

Performance Task examples were collected from the theatres below over the course of the last two years, and helped influence the creation of the models above. The actual models were created by the TEAM Working Group.
Alliance Theatre, Council  of Chief State School Officers, National Assessment of Educational Progress