Use compound problems requiring several performances and significant student time. May contain tasks which require the student to document products of group efforts as well as individual performances. Attribution of work to an individual student becomes an obvious issue when group activities form part of the assessment. When school district, state, and federal policy makers are referring to portfolios, they are often referring to high-stakes portfolios. If test items on a test must be different each year the test is given in order to prevent cheating or teaching to the test, the differing forms of the test should be able to produce the same scores from the same students.
Reliable tests have little random error in their measurements.
Scoring of performance assessments is more subjective than with other assessments. Raters of performance assessments may use rubrics, sets of guidelines, to try to decrease variation in scoring between different raters. Training raters to be consistent with one another and keeping scoring consistent between raters when thousands of tests must be scored becomes difficult. The content domain is the body of knowledge, skills or abilities being examined by a test. A product produced by a student may be used to reach a conclusion about the student's abilities to perform the construct.