Lights up! Assessing standards-based performance skills in drama education

Abstract

With the recent release of the National Core Arts Standards (NCAS), educators need new consistent, fair assessments of drama learning. As an initial starting point, this paper reports on the creation of the LATA Drama Performance Rubric, a standards-based assessment to measure learning occurring under real drama classroom conditions that we hope evaluators will find to be useful. A widespread group of drama instructors coordinated with researchers to create a rubric containing four categories: (1) Diction and Volume; (2) Movement and Gesture; (3) Group Coordination; and (4) Stage Presence. Field testing of the instrument with 97 students in the treatment group and 80 students in the control group demonstrated its ability to distinguish between fourth-grade classrooms that had and had not received long-term drama instruction. Reliability, validity, and NCAS alignment are discussed, along with limitations and future recommendations.