JACKSON -- Fifth-grade teacher Martha Short knows how performance-based assessment works; she's been testing parts of the new system in her classroom over the past year.

Short, who teaches at Jackson's North Elementary School in Fruitland, is among senior leaders in Missouri learning how it works.

She and other senior leaders will be training teachers in the testing method, which is part of Senate Bill 380's education reforms.

In order to make the new type of assessment work, teachers need training, said Jim Friedebach, director of assessment with Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Thirty-six senior leaders like Short have been selected to test the new testing materials. They began the tests last year.

The goal is to have a repository of testing exercises available to teachers when the assessment portion of Senate Bill 380 is enacted. Also, teachers should be familiar with the types of projects, how to use them in classrooms, and how to score them.

The most common performance assessment is done with writing assignments. Missouri has a writing assessment program in place. Students are given "prompts" and then asked to write about that topic.

"If you are going to measure writing, have the child write," said Friedebach. "That kind of idea has been expanded to other disciplines. It's a real departure from the use of multiple choice tests."

With performance-based assessment, teachers use performance tasks or projects to judge a student's progress and mastery of a subject or topic.

Friedebach said: "Realistically, I think many teachers have made use of these types of projects in their classrooms. A science experiment is a performance assessment."

Said Short: "My kids really were fascinated by the tasks and what they required. Then they saw what they had been taught: All those little skills fitting into a bigger picture."

For example, Short's fifth-graders did a geometry project to build a "tetrahetra" with soda straws. Students then calculated angles and surface area. They predicted what a second level would look like and then wrote about their experiment.

Another project was titled "Trash Trouble," which was based on ecology.

Students read and react to articles and newscasts about trash and recycling and conservation. Then they were asked to form their own possible solutions.

To help teachers learn about the new testing systems, regional assessment centers, including one at Southeast Missouri State University, have been formed. Linda Greason is the regional facilitator at the Southeast center.

The office is funded through a grant from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to the university.

Greason's job is to work with senior leaders as they begin the process of piloting some of the performance tasks. She is available to answer questions, do leg work and stay in touch with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

In addition to Short, senior leaders are working at Farmington, Ste. Genevieve and Bloomfield in Southeast Missouri. Two others are to begin work in the coming school year.

Some of the senior leaders will develop the assessment systems. Work is scheduled to begin later this month.

A specific statewide assessment or test document likely won't be written. The educators are working on an assessment system.

"Hopefully we will get to the point where teachers write the tasks and then right the rubric. Nothing is standardized," Greason said.

A rubric is the tool used to grade performance tasks. It sets criteria and defines expected outcomes and levels at which the work should be done. These standards are given to students before they begin the project. They know what will be judged.

Short said performance tasks would likely be used only a couple of times a year.

The projects are more "open-minded," Short said.

Children know up front how they will be scored. Scores are based on whether the project meets certain criteria.

Often the projects do not have right or wrong answers. Many right answers may be possible.

"There are so many ways to get an answer," Short said. "This takes into account kids' different backgrounds. There are many ways to get there and many ways of looking at it."

Creativity comes into play.

As part of her duties as a senior leader, Short has been talking with teachers in other school districts. Responses vary: Some teachers are receptive; others wonder if it can work.

Short last week attended a workshop in California on portfolio building, another new assessment technique.

Students could produce projects throughout the year, keep them in a portfolio, and the portfolio would be graded at the end of the year. A portfolio could even be used to show completion of high school graduation requirements.

Multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank tests will stick around. "That's part of the classroom, checking knowledge and mastery of particular subjects," Short said. "I don't see that as totally passe. But this is another step, adding one more layer to that."

"We have always talked about little pieces, that children learn things in little pieces," Short said. "This asks you to assimilate those little pieces. It shows children how all the little pieces fit together."

A look at performance-based assessment

What is it?

Performance-based assessment, also known as alternative or authentic assessment, is a form of testing that requires students to perform a task rather than select an answer from a ready-made list. Experienced raters -- either teachers or other trained staff -- then judge the quality of the student's work based on an agreed-upon set of criteria.

Some methods of assessing performance

-- Open-ended or extended response exercises: Questions or other prompts that require students to explore a topic orally or in writing.

-- Extended tasks or performance tasks: Sustained attention in a single work area carried out over several hours or longer.

-- Portfolios: Selected collections of a variety of performance-based work. A portfolio might include a student's best pieces and the student's evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of several pieces.

Source: Education Research Consumer Guide, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, November 1992.