In the Public Interest Anchoring Assessment With Exemplars: Why Students and Teachers Need Models

This essay presents an argument for the use of examples that set a clear standard for student perfor-mance. As educators implement new forms of assessments, they should calibrate local standards to exemplars, anchoring the highest point of their scor-ing system to examples of excellent performance. Educators should not be fearful of describing superlative performance even though all students may not reach those expert levels. Four types of per-formance criteria are suggested: impact, process, form and content. Examples of assessment initiatives grounded in models of excellent performance are also summarized. The J. Peterman clothil1g catalogue had been coming t