Performance Assessment: Critics, Criticism, and Controversy

Arguably, performance assessment is an integral element of all human educative endeavors. It is the centerpiece of the standards-based reforms movement of the 1990s and continues to be a dominant feature of curriculum planning today. Using performance assessment as a lens, this article addresses the concerns and cautions offered by seminal measurement researchers. The traditional image of performance assessment as a better means to facilitate student achievement is challenged via the illumination of acute criticisms of performance assessment. This article supports the journey toward new understandings of the inherent elements of performance assessment in both theory and praxis by synthesizing critical concerns.