Chapter 10: Issues in the Design and Scoring of Performance Assessments that Assess Complex Thinking Skills

The educational reform in the 1980s was based on the premise that too many students knew how to repeat facts and concepts, but were unable to apply those facts and concepts to solve realistic problems that required complex thinking skills. Proponents of the educational reform contended that assessments needed to better reflect students’ competencies in applying their knowledge and cognitive skills to solve meaningful tasks. Promising advances in the study of both cognition and learning in achievement domains and of educational measurement also prompted individuals to think differently about how students process and reason with information and how assessments can be designed to capture meaningful aspects of students’ cognition and learning. Performance assessments that assess complex cognitive skills were also considered to be valuable tools for educational reform by policymakers and advocates for curriculum reform (Linn, 1993; Resnick & Resnick, 1982). They were thought of as vehicles that could help shape sound instructional practice by modeling to teach-ers what is important to teach and to students what is important to learn. Performance assessments that measure complex thinking skills such as problem-solving and reasoning can not only serve as indicators of learning, but also serve as exemplars of assessments that stimulate and enrich learning (Bennett & Gitomer, 2009; Black & William, 1998).