This book is a guide to the development and use of performance tasks and rubrics in the middle school mathematics classroom. It contains a rationale for, and a discussion of strengths and limitations of, performance tasks to assess student achievement and progress in mathematics. A field-tested process is offered for developing performance tasks and rubrics. Chapter 1, "Introduction," provides an introduction to performance assessment and how it differs from traditional testing. Chapter 2, "Why Performance Assessment," presents the rationale for performance assessment and compares its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with traditional testing. In Chapter 3, "Making an Evaluation Plan," there are suggestions for making an evaluation plan and linking that plan to the overall approach to curriculum development. Chapter 4, "Evaluating Complex Performance," contains an overview of evaluating complex performance and includes a description of evaluating nonschool, yet complex, performance that can be used in a workshop setting to introduce educators to performance assessment. Chapters 5 and 6, "Creating a Performance Task" and "Creating a Rubric," offer the step-by-step procedure for creating a performance task and a rubric for classroom use, and Chapter 7, "Adapting Existing Performance Tasks and Rubrics," suggests techniques for adapting an existing performance task to the specific classroom. Chapter 8, "Middle School Mathematics Performance Tasks," offers performance tasks for the major topics in middle school mathematics. An appendix contains handouts to be distributed to students for each of the 24 tasks. (Contains nine figures.) (SLD)