The best performance assessments feel both rigorous and real. They ask learners to apply skills in authentic ways—whether through a debate, a lab report, or a community project. But designing tasks that are both meaningful and manageable can feel daunting. What makes a performance assessment “high quality”? How do we ensure it captures growth in competency skills, not just completion of a project?

This Zone isn’t about building a performance task from scratch. Most of us aren’t starting from a blank page—we’re starting from something. Whether it’s a project we love, one that needs a refresh, one we've been told we need to teach, or a new idea we’ve co-created with AI tools, the work lies in becoming critical creators who adapt, align, and improve existing designs so they better serve learning. In this Zone, you’ll bring along and use an existing project or performance task as your case study—analyzing it through a CBE lens to uncover what’s working, what’s missing, and how to strengthen its connection to competencies. You’ll explore the essential elements of performance assessment, examine models and exemplars across subjects, and consider how formative checkpoints and rubrics make expectations transparent. You’ll investigate how performance assessments can become engines of equity, engagement, and deeper learning when designed with both learners and competencies at the center.