Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning

Chapter 4Reaching Out: International Benchmarks for Performance Assessment

Linda Darling-Hammond

with the Assistance of Laura Wentworth

Beginning in the 1990s, the United States launched a set of wide-ranging “standards-based” reforms intended to better prepare all children for the higher educational demands of life and work in the twenty-first century. All fifty states developed standards for learning and tests to evaluate student progress. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reinforced the use of test-based accountability to raise achievement, and scores have climbed on state tests used for accountability purposes, yet the United States has not shown comparable gains on international assessments of student learning since the law was passed in 2001. ...