Center for Collaborative Education

Micro-credentials for Performance Assessment

How might assessment empower teachers to lead their own professional learning and collaborate more deeply with each other?

Micro-credentials are a form of performance assessment that specify the criteria for mastering a skill as well as the evidence a teacher can provide to demonstrate they’ve met these criteria. When a teacher submits compelling evidence, they can earn micro-credentials and be recognized for their learning. The Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) has created micro-credentials on the following instructional practices: performance assessment design, assessing essential skills and dispositions through performance assessment, leading a performance assessment learning community, and advancing equity through performance assessment. Using the micro-credentials, teachers learn performance assessment by experiencing performance assessment themselves. CCE is now partnering with several districts to build the micro-credentials more formally into the districts’ systems for professional learning. This includes policies and structures to provide teachers the time, incentives, and collaborative supports necessary to guide their own professional learning using the micro-credentials.