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Resources

Resources Introductory Text

There are four different resource categories:

  1. Tasks: This website has performance assessment tasks.
  2. Tasks (Intl): This website has performance assessment tasks from outside of the United States.
  3. Projects: This website has project-based learning designs.
  4. Supporting materials: This website has materials that support performance tasks or has resources that are helpful for designing performance tasks (e.g. lesson plans, rubrics, tools, etc.) but does not have performance tasks or projects.

Name Category Gradesort descending Subject

Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT)

Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) released items for 10th grade. There are three generations of the tests:

  • 1st generation: from 1995 to 2000
  • 2nd generation: from 2001 to 2006
  • 3rd generation: from 2007 to 2013

Tasks 10 English, Math, Science

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardized assessment administered to 15-year-olds in schools. Four assessments have so far been carried out (in 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009). Tests are typically administered to between 4,500 and 10,000 students in each country. The test may use as many as three different question-and-response formats: Multiple-choice response, short-answer response, and extended-response.

Tasks (Intl) 10 Math, Reading, Science

West Virginia Teach21 Project Based Learning

This is a searchable database for Project-Based Learning designs. The designs on this website were created by West Virginia teachers who worked with the West Virginia Department of Education Office of Instruction through participation in the Teacher Leadership Institute, the Secondary PBL project, content-specific professional development in mathematics, and the Model Schools and Classrooms project.

Projects 2-12 Dance, Math, Music, Reading and ELA, Science, Social Studies, Theatre, Visual Art

Institute for Learning: Learning Research and Development Center

Institute for Learning (IFL) has built performance assessments and had a few task sets online for English language arts. They are aligned with the Common Core State Standards and designed to prepare students for the PARCC assessments.

Tasks 3, 6, 10 ELA

Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO, Ontario, Canada)

EQAO is funded by the Government of Ontario to conduct yearly provincial assessment. The test questions include both multiple choice questions and open-end questions.

1. Assessment of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, Primary Division (Grade 1-3) and Junior Division (Grade 4-6)

2. Grade 9 Assessment of Mathematics

3. Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT, Grade 10) 

Tasks (Intl) 3, 6, 9, 10 Literacy, Math, Reading, Writing

National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA, New Zealand)

National Monitoring Study of Student  Achievement (NMSSA) aims to obtain a broad picture of the achievement and other educational outcomes of representative samples of students in New Zealand schools at Years 4 and 8 (Grade 3 and 7). The study began in 2012 and is carried out over a five-year cycle. It focuses on two learning areas of the New Zealand each year and builds on the strengths of NEMP (National Education Monitoring Project 1995-2010). Yearly reports including released tasks and assessment results for each subject.

Tasks (Intl) 3, 7 Art, Graphs, Tables & Maps, Health & Physical Ed, Information Skills, Listening & Viewing, Math, Music, Reading & Speaking, Science, Social Studies, Technology, Writing

Washington State Classroom- Based Assessments

Washington State Classroom-Based Assessments in Social Science, Arts, and Health and Fitness. The web site provides files of task descriptions, rubrics, support materials, and scoring guides.

Tasks 3-12 Arts, Social Science, Health and Fitness

Understanding Proficiency

Understanding Proficiency provides resources to help educators develop a deeper understanding of the Common Core State Standards by analyzing student work on performance tasks. The resources include samples of real student work on the Smarter Balanced Practice Test in Mathematics and ELA/Literacy performance tasks.

Supporting materials 3-12 Not specified

PBL University (PBLU)

PBLU includes Common Core aligned projects projects that have been designed by Buck Institute of Education and its partners. 

Projects 3-12 ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies

World Class Tests (UK)

The website describes World Class Tests as an international initiative designed to identify and assess gifted and talented students around the world devised by the British government Department for Education. They are specially designed for young talented children to challenge their logical thinking and their potential in higher order thinking and problem-solving.

Tasks (Intl) 3-9 Math

Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international comparative study of the reading literacy of young students. PIRLS studies the reading achievement and reading behaviors and attitudes of fourth-grade students in the United States and students in the equivalent of fourth grade in other participating countries. PIRLS was first administered in 2001 and included 35 countries, and was administered again in 2006 to students in 45 education systems (including countries and subnational education systems, such as Canadian provinces and Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China). It was administered in 2011 to students in 53 education systems and in 2016 to students in 54 education systems. PIRLS is coordinated by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

Tasks (Intl) 4 Reading Literacy

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS)

First conducted in 1995, TIMSS reports every four years on the achievement of fourth and eighth grade students worldwide. The web page lists the resources available for educators to download, including question items, scoring guidelines, and item statistics.

Tasks (Intl) 4, 8 Math, Science

New Standards Performance Standards

Lauren Resnick of the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh and Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) founded the New Standards Project in collaboration with states, urban school districts, and private foundations in the 1990s. The New Standards Performance Standards documents describe what students should know and be able to do at the end of fourth, eighth, and tenth grades and answer the question, "What level of performance is sufficient to affirm that a student has met the standards?" The documents include short descriptions of performance tasks, student work examples, and commentary linked the student work to its corresponding standard(s).

Tasks 4, 8, and 10 Applied Learning, ELA, Math, Science

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

NAEP assesses what America's students know and can do in various subjects periodically across the nation and provides a picture of the students' academic progress over time. Test questions include multiple-choice items, short constructed response items, and extended constructed response items. The web site provides sample question booklets for each test year and a searchable question database.

Tasks 4, 8, and 12 Arts, Civics, Economics, Geography, Math, Reading, Science, U.S. History, Writing

The Historical Thinking Project (Canada)

A Canadian website aims to provide models of more meaningful history teaching, assessment, and learning for students. The project revolves around the proposition that historical thinking is central to history instruction and that students should become more competent as historical thinkers as they progress through their schooling.

Tasks (Intl) 4-12 History

Stanford Beyond the Bubble

Developed by the Stanford History Education Group, the web site offers assessments that capture students' knowledge in action rather than their recall of discrete facts.

Tasks 6-12 History

Oakland Unified School District History/Social Studies Department

The web site offers historical questions with assessments and support materials designed to improve historical reading, writing, and thinking.

Tasks 6-12 History

Next Generation Science Standards

Classroom sample assessment tasks that blend content, practices, and concepts from both the NGSS and the Common Core State Standards are available. Additional tasks will be added as they become available.

Tasks 6-12 ELA, History/Social Studies, Math, Science

Center for Collaborative Education (CCE)

CCE has established Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) with the funding from Nellie Mae Education Foundation. They have created a set of Common Core-aligned performance tasks, with teacher materials and student work samples that have been field-tested in schools. Their tools and resources are available online with registration (some of their tasks and tools are included in PARB).

Supporting materials 6-12 ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies

Mathematics Assessment Project (MAP) by MARS: Shell Center, University of Nottingham & UC Berkeley

Funded by Gates Foundation, MAP designs and develops well-engineered assessment tools to support US schools in implementing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS). The website has the following materials:

  • Summative tests or tasks that exemplifies the performance targets that the standards imply,
  • Classroom Challenges are lessons that support teachers in formative assessment, and 
  • Professional development modules that helps teachers with the pedagogical challenges that this assessment approach involves. 

Tasks 6-12 Math

Bowland Maths (UK)

A list of tasks designed by the Bowland Math initiative in UK. The tasks are aimed at Key Stage 3 in the UK education system, which is equivalent to Grade 6-8 or Middle School in the US education system. 

Tasks (Intl) 6-8 Math

The River City Project

An interactive computer simulation for middle grades science students to learn scientific inquiry and 21st century skills. River City has the look and feel of a videogame but contains content developed from National Science Education Standards, National Educational Technology Standards, and 21st Century Skills. It is a 17-hour, time-on-task curriculum that includes a pretest and a research conference at the end of the unit. It concentrates on the areas of epidemiology, scientific inquiry, and experimentation.

Tasks 6-8 Science

Stanford Education Assessment Laboratory (SEAL)

Science assessments designed by Professor Richard Shavelson's lab: Stanford Education Assessment Laboratory (SEAL).

Tasks 6-9 Science

College Board Advanced Placement Exam

Advanced Placement examinations are taken each May by students at participating American, Canadian, and international educational institutions. The tests are the culmination of year-long Advanced Placement (AP) courses. All but one of the AP exams combines multiple-choice questions with a free-response section in either essay or problem-solving format. AP Studio Art, the sole exception, requires students to submit a portfolio for review. Every subject has a few released questions available for the years the exams were administered and usually includes scoring guidelines, sample student responses, and commentary on those responses, as well as exam statistics and the Chief Reader's Student Performance Q&A for past administrations.

Tasks 9-12 ELA, Foreign Languages, Math, Science, Social Studies

National History Day

It is an annual competition that requires students to conduct research and create work in the following categories: Documentary, Exhibit, Paper, Performance, and Web Site. The web site does not have a bank of assessments but offers resources for project-based curriculum and instruction.

Supporting materials 9-12 History

New Tech Network

New Tech Network is a nonprofit organization with member schools using project-based learning approach to engage students with curriculum. The website has resources for project-based learning. Echo, their learning management system, has a searchable library of standards-based projects developed by teachers in the New Tech Network. Echo requires a username and password and is not open to the public.

Supporting materials 9-12 Not specified

New York Performance Standards Consortium

The website has a list of sample teacher-designed interim assessments in science and social studies. It also has a list of student exemplars in ELA, math, science, and social studies.

Tasks 9-12 ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies

Historical Thinking Matters

This is a website focusing on key topics in U.S. history. It is designed to teach students how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives. The webquest section has two activities that ask users to explore the issues related to the module topic by using other resources and document collections available on the web.

Tasks 9-12 History

ConnectEd

ConnectEd has designed integrated curriculum units to make meaningful connections for students across subject areas. English, mathematics, science, social studies, and career technical teachers collaborate to plan and present these lessons that center around a career-themed issue or problem.

Projects 9-12 Career Technical Education, ELA, Health, Math, Science, Social Studies, World Languages

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (Australia)

The Victorian essential learning Standards (VELS) curricula were introduced in 2005 and ended in 2013. The original website materials have been archived and is available from the National Library of Australia website. Sample units with embedded performance assessments in the following subjects: Arts English LOTE (Languages Other Than English) Mathematics The Humanities Science - Economics - Geography - History The units are categorized by 6 levels:

Level 1: Prep (K) 
Level 2: Year 1 and Year 2 
Level 3: Year 3 and Year 4 
Level 4: Year 5 and Year 6
Level 5: Year 7 and Year 8
Level 6: Year 9 and Year 10

Tasks (Intl) K-10 Arts, English, Foreign Languages, Math, The Humanities, Science

The Math Forum at Drexel

An online resource for math learning, teaching, and communication since 1992. "Problem of the Week" tasks for K-12 and upper levels are available. Includes task samples presented at NCTM/NCSM conferences. Teacher packets include teaching suggestions, rubric, and some samples of the student work.

Tasks K-12 Math

Cambridge Assessments (UK)

Programs and qualifications from University of Cambridge International Examinations for 5-19 year olds are divided up into four stages: 1) Cambridge Primary (5-11 year olds), 2) Cambridge Secondary 1 (11-14 year olds), 3) Cambridge Secondary 2 (14-16 year olds) and 4) Cambridge Advanced (16-19 year olds). The Cambridge Advanced stage consists of two programs: 1) Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary (AS) Level and Advanced (A) level and 2) Cambridge Pre-U. AS and A levels and Pre-U programs are usually offered to students between 16-19 years old. Sample assessments and mark schemes that go with the course are available on the website.

Tasks (Intl) K-12 Arts, ELA, Foreign Languages, Math, Science, Social Studies

Buck Institute of Education (BIE)

BIE is a non-profit research and development organization working to make schools more effective through the use of problem and project based learning. It has resources such as planning forms, student handouts, rubrics, and articles for educators to download and use to design, assess, and manage projects. Users can also perform project searches to find projects in their project library that BIE has curated from various sources.

Supporting materials K-12 Arts, Career Technical Education, ELA, Global, Health, Math, Science, Social Studies, World Languages

TeachingHistory.Org

TeachingHistory.Org is funded through the Office of Innovation and Improvement's Teaching American History (TAH) program of the U.S. Department of Education. It is designed to help K-12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom.

Supporting materials K-12 History

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE)

SCALE, formerly associated with the School Redesign Network at Stanford University, provides technical consulting and support to schools and districts that have committed to adopting performance-based assessment as part of a multiple-measures system for evaluating student learning and measuring school performance.

Supporting materials K-12 Not specified

Performance Assessment Links in Math (PALM)

An on-line resource bank of math performance assessment tasks indexed via the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). The PALM site was developed by the Center for Technology and Learning at SRI International. The overall content area is science but the tasks also require math skills (the skills are not specified).

Tasks K-12 Math, Science

Digital Chalkboard

This website has various resources including lessons and web activities and videos designed for California educators.

Supporting materials K-12 ELA, Math, Visual and Performing Arts, Science, History/Social Studies, Career and Technical Education, World Languages, STEM, Physical Education

Performance Assessment Links in Science (PALS)

An on-line resource bank of science performance assessment tasks indexed via the National Science Education Standards (NSES) and various other standards frameworks. The PALS site was developed by the Center for Technology and Learning at SRI International.

Tasks K-12 Science

GLOBE Classroom Assessment Tools

The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program provides the public the opportunities to participate in data collection and the scientific process and to understand the earth systems and our global environment. The website has sample student assessment tools and frameworks to provide teachers and students with evidence about progress on GLOBE program goals.

Tasks K-12 Science

EDSitement

This website contains rich resources on the lesson plans for the humanity subjects.

Supporting materials K-12 Art, Culture, Foreign Language, History, Social Studies, Language Arts, Literature

Asia Society

Asia Society's Graduation Performance System (GPS) is adapted from a system developed by Envision Schools and the Stanford Center For Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE). The website has resources on GPS such as performance outcomes and rubrics available, but their tasks are not open for download.

Supporting materials K-12 Arts, ELA, History/Social Studies, Math, Science, World Languages

ePals Projects for Classroom Collaboration

The topics are standards-based and of global interest. Each project is designed to be used as is or customized to specific classroom's needs. The website requires a registration to see classroom projects.

Projects K-12 ELA, Science, Social Studies, Math, Music, Technology, Career Skills

Maryland State Department of Education Online Instructional Toolkit

Maryland State Department of Education Online Instructional Toolkit has various resources aligned with the Common Core State Standards, including lesson seeds, lesson plans and units, and videos.

Supporting materials K-12 STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), ELA, Math

Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC)

Literacy Design Collaborative has a free curriculum library with nationally vetted and calibrated content and a series of rubrics developed by SCALE.

Tasks K-12 English Language Arts, Science & Technical Subjects, History & Social Studies

Inquiry By Design

Inquiry by Design designs performance assessment tasks and provides professional development for teachers. Some of the tasks designed by them are included in PARB.

Supporting materials K-12 ELA, Math, History/Social Studies, Science

iEARN Collaboration Centre

The projects are designed and facilitated by educators and students worldwide, and result in a range of collaborative final "products" that will fit their own classroom and curriculum needs.

Projects K-12 Arts, Community Service, ELA, Environment, Interdisciplinary, Math, Science, Social Studies, Technology

High Tech High School

Sample projects available at High Tech High School's online task bank--many are interdisciplinary (use filters to search for projects: e.g. High School and Math, High School and Humanities).

Projects K-12 Art, Biology, Chemistry, Drama, Engineering, Geography, Graphic Design, History, Humanities, Math, Multimedia, Pedagogy, Physics, Science, Spanish

We Are Teachers: Classroom Ideas

The website has resources of activities and lesson plans and is designed to connect teachers in an online community.

Supporting materials K-12 (+Early Learning, PreK and beyond Grade 12) Arts, Math, Early Learning , ELL, English Language Arts, Foreign Language , Health/PE, Science, Social Emotional Learning, Social Studies, Special Education, Technology

National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC)

The site has a searchable database of service-learning project ideas and tools.

Supporting materials K-12 (and beyond) Community Development, ELA, Environment, Intergenerational, Health and Wellness, Math, Science, Social Studies

Global SchoolNet's Projects Registry

The Project Registry contains more than 3,000 annotated project listings and is searchable by date, age level, subject, collaboration type, technology tools or keyword.

Supporting materials K-12 (and beyond) Arts, Community Service, ELA, Environment, Interdisciplinary, Math, Science, Social Studies, Technology

The Reading and Writing Project

These performance assessments were created by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project for NYC Department of Education and some are owned by NYC Department of Education. The NYC Department of Education has agreed to allow Teachers College Reading and Writing Project to post the performance assessment online to support students' academic progress. Any other use of the assessments will need to obtain the permission from the NYC Department of Education. Some resources require site registration.

Tasks K-8 Reading, Writing

Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative

Tasks are semi-secure and only available to members. However, there are articles and presentations available for the public on the website.

Supporting materials PreK-12 Math