ADMINISTERED PERFORMANCE TASKS IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE

CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT REFORM IN PHILIPPINE PUBLIC EDUCATION

Literary Review

The shift to performance and standards-based grading from the traditional standardized

testing has been reinforced more greatly in pursuance of the Deped Order No. 8, s,. 2015,

otherwise known, Policy Guidelines on Classroom Assessment for the K to 12 Basic Education

Program in the Philippines. The increased emphasis to performance-based assessments, as

compared to the previously rescinded KPUP grading system (Deped, 2012), aims to provide

appropriate performance assessments that will enable learners to transfer their knowledge,

understanding, and skills “successfully in future situations” (Deped, 2015), as what are also

being implemented in other countries.

In Thailand, Hallinger & Lee (2013) explored the “principal capacity to lead reform of

teaching and learning quality,” and when the country “passed a national educational law that

paved way for major reforms in teaching, the implementation progress has been slow, uneven,

and lacking deep penetration onto classrooms.”

Similarly when the Philippine government educational standards were revised due to the

“shift from industrial to knowledge economy, Plata (2010) “analyzed the alignment of standards

in the English curriculum” and the “authentic of the assessment tasks” and found out that “most

of the standards targeted literature rather than language use” and “only few performance tasks
were related to authentic use of language” in contrary to what Richards (2006) recommended

that tasks should “reflect natural use of language” to be considered authentic.

Attesting the effectiveness of performance-based and authentic tasks in increasing

proficiency, the pilot study of Ernst & Glennie (2015) indicated that “approximately 48 percent

of [their] student participants demonstrated performance based proficiency of knowledge,” and

subsequently, Potter, Ernst & Glennie (2017) concluded that as “performance tasks became more

complex, the proficiency rate [also] increased.”

In an exploration into the assessment reform policy and its implementation in the

Philippine public secondary education, Plata (2007) uncovered that there might have been other

factors that “led to the limited implementation of the assessment reform” by participating

English teachers from rural and urban public schools in this study whose “data collection started

in 2003 up to 2007.” With the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, more commonly known

as the K to 12, a reform in assessment in pursuance of its DepEd Order 73 mandated that “all

students will be assessed based on KPUP (knowledge, process, understanding, and

performance/product).

The new policy was then analyzed using the Grading for Learning Framework by

O’Connor (2012) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Language. The results

of the study on KPUP and SBG by Plata (2015) showed that “there were inconsistencies of terms

used,” and the conducted survey revealed “teachers did not share a common understanding of the

key concepts” that are very essential in this reform.

The guidelines given in this DO 73, s. 2012 were immediately rescinded by the currently-

implemented Department Order No. 8, s. 2015, only after a couple of years, wherein the KPUP
grading components were replaced by only 3 major classifications/components, namely written

works (WW), 1 quarterly assessment (QA), and performance tasks (PT). With the performance

tasks weighing as much as 50%, e.g. in language subjects as English, the quality and authenticity

of the tasks given must keenly be gathered, assessed and analyzed.

Saefurrohman (2016) found that “Filipino junior high school English teachers made and

prepared their own assessments” as compared to Indonesian junior high school English teachers

who only “used items from published textbooks.” Nonetheless, the nature, effectiveness,

alignment with the standards, and authenticity of these self-made tasks, which might have been

contextualized in public schools, shall be investigated.

Teacher-made assessments must be reviewed intensively, and to support the

recommendation of Plata (2016) in her policy analysis of the outstanding classroom assessment

policy, this investigation into the administration of performance tasks aims to “contribute to the

discussion by surveying how teachers” personally see and “implement CAR” in their classrooms,

and the findings of this present study can be helpful in addressing the teachers and

administrators’ needs to implement the program more effectively, especially in public schools.

Although analyses of the documents were already made, the implementation, especially

by DepEd school teachers, is yet to be described and monitored, and no recent study has focused

yet on the nature of administered performance tasks, the frequency or number per quarter,

authenticity, gradual release of support from guided to independent transfer, and their alignment

with prescribed standards, which will be possible to determine by surveying the teachers about

their previously assigned performance tasks to their public school students.