HomeTeaching Performance AssessmentNew York City Teacher Effectiveness Pilot Project

New York City Teacher Effectiveness Pilot

In fall 2010 SCALE partnered with the New York City Department of Education to develop performance assessments. These assessments were designed for use in high school English, Biology, Algebra and US History classrooms. Content experts Daisy Martin (History), Dennie Wolf (English), Michal Lomask (Science) and the Silicon Valley Mathematics Institute led the creation and selection of the tasks with input from participating teachers. In fall of 2012, middle school tasks in English, Science and World History were added, bringing middle school teachers into the project.

Assessments follow SCALE principles, being designed to be content-embedded, authentic, multiple day experiences. Teachers were given training in implementing, scoring and interpreting the tasks. Participating teachers indicated that the delivery and scoring process involved with performance assessments was influential in their view of professional growth. Although challenging for students and teachers, the process was reported as one of the best professional development opportunities participants had ever had. Currently, analysis is being completed on the second year of the pilot to determine validity and reliability of measuring student growth with these assessments.

Development of the Assessments

The overall purpose of the study is to establish the reliability and validity of embedded common performance assessments of student learning in four secondary content areas: English Language Arts (ELA), Math, Science and History/Social Studies as indicators of student performance and growth. Assessments were designed by content area specialists, working in conjunction with the New York City Department of Education and with New York City content area teachers.

Each performance assessment focuses on embedded curricular ideas, asking students to perform authentic tasks in the context of the subject area.

Sample Assessment and Rubrics

Do you know what you eat?

DREAM Act

Training and Scoring System

Teachers were provided with training in implementing the tasks through a series of webinars, developed in conjunction with the New York City Department of Education. After implementing the tasks, teachers were trained to score student work. Scoring sessions were conducted by the content area experts who had designed the assessments. After being trained to score, teachers used an electronic scoring platform to mark student work. Scores were confirmed through a double-scoring process using content experts.