NH Performance Assessment Network

The New Hampshire Department of Education (NHDOE) is partnering with the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) and the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (NCIEA) to develop a state-wide performance assessment system that will balance local control with state-wide accountability and comparability. The NHDOE policy requiring all high school courses to be aligned to course-level competencies is one step the state has already taken to foster new practices of assessment that promote and assess “deeper levels of understanding important academic content and skills.”

The student performance assessment system will build on the competency work and will be one component of the New Hampshire student assessment system. The system will include a set of common performance assessments that have high technical quality, locally designed assessments with guidelines for ensuring high technical quality, regional scoring sessions and local district peer review audits to ensure sound accountability systems and high inter-rater reliability, a web-based bank of local and common performance assessments, and a regional support network to districts and schools.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Enriching New Hampshire's Assessment and Accountability Systems through Quality Performance Assessment.

Designing Quality Performance Assessments Institute

Designing Quality Performance Assessments is an exciting new multi-year initiative that aims to engage New Hampshire’s school districts in building valid and reliable performance assessments into our state student assessment system. Performance assessments are multi-step assignments with clear criteria, expectations, and processes which measure how well a student transfers knowledge and applies complex skills to create or refine an original product.

• Brochure

The foundational principles of this initiative are:

• New Hampshire’s educational system should provide students with real opportunities to learn the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for all students to graduate from High School college-and-career ready, pursue meaningful post-secondary options and to become productive citizens of New Hampshire and the world.

• New Hampshire’s student assessment system should promote and measure knowledge, skills, and dispositions in ways that provide feedback for improvement of student and system learning.

• Performance assessments are a vehicle for encouraging the teaching and learning of meaningful content and skills

• New Hampshire’s system of educator support should build the capacity of educators to engage students in the learning of meaningful knowledge and skills

• Accountability systems, including educator evaluation systems, should be built upon a foundation of a student assessment system that measures critically important student outcomes.

Cohort 1 (2012 - 2013) began with 20 High Schools engaged in assessment literacy training, group performance assessment of student work, development of common performance tasks in English language arts and mathematics, building pf professional learning networks, and leadership for innovation facilitated groups.

We are currently seeking Cohort 2 (2013-2014) districts that wish to have their schools join a K- 8 and/or a high school cohort, beginning summer 2013, to undertake this work. All applications will be due electronically by Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:00 p.m. via survey monkey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NHPANetwork2013-14 . There are still a few spaces available for next year's cohorts, therefore we will continue to accept applications through the survey monkey link.

Opening Institute Dates

• K-8 Cohort 2 will be Monday July 22 –Tuesday July 23. Location TBD.
• HS Cohort 2 will be Tuesday, July 30-Wednesday 31. Location TBD.

• Cohort 2 Application and Guidelines

Cohort 2 Informational Webinar:

• Slides from the Informational Webinar about the Student Performance Assessment Systems Initiative (April 2013)

Cohort 1 Informational Webinar:

Slides from the Informational Webinar about the Student Performance Assessment Systems Initiative (September 2012)

Practitioner Assessment Experts

Educators from the 2012-2013 cohort of the New Hampshire Performance Assessment Network are invited to apply to become Practitioner Assessment Experts in the Network from the summer of 2013 through June of 2014.  Practitioner Assessment Experts will receive additional professional development in creating, administering, and scoring quality performance assessments, as well as facilitating this process in local schools and districts in their respective regions. In the 2013-2014 school year, approximately 15-20 assessment practitioners will be trained and supported, while receiving an annual stipend to conduct this performance assessment work.

Practitioner Assessment Expert Application and Guidelines

Paul Leather Deputy Commissioner (603) 271-3801 Paul.Leather@doe.nh.gov

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