FELE
For Testing Beginning 1/1/2026

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Subtest 3 – Leadership Development

General Information

The written performance assignment is an authentic task that offers you the opportunity to demonstrate the skills necessary for supporting emerging school leaders through mentorship, growth opportunities, and systems of accountability; and for applying decision-making strategies that develop the capacity of emerging school leaders to improve instructional practices.  For this assignment, you will develop an action plan for cultivating emerging school leaders based on a scenario-based prompt that includes data related to students' academic learning.

Directions for the Written Performance Assignment

A sample written performance assignment is presented below. You will have one hour and 15 minutes to prepare, write, and edit your response.

You must write an original response that specifically and directly responds to the assignment. Pre-prepared responses that are discovered to contain memorized sentences or pre-prepared passages will be invalidated. For example, if the raters discover passages that appear in two or more responses, the responses and the violation will be brought to the attention of the Florida Department of Education and may result in the invalidation of your scores.

Be sure to monitor your time effectively and allow time for editing and revising. Take a few minutes to organize your thoughts and plan your response. Leave time for editing and revising after you have completed your response. You may outline or plan your response on the erasable notebooklet provided. Your informal outline or plan will not be scored.

Your response should demonstrate your ability to write, with proficiency, at a postsecondary level appropriate to an educational leader.

Performance Criteria

Your written performance assessment will be evaluated holistically according to the following criteria.

Performance Criteria
Criteria Description
Completion The degree to which the examinee completes the assignment by responding to each specific task in the assignment.
Data and Plan Alignment The extent to which the examinee establishes plans for change that are aligned with data findings and relevant implications.
Application of Content The degree to which the examinee applies the relevant knowledge and skills to the response accurately and effectively and reflects understanding of the target audience.
Support The degree to which the examinee supports the response with appropriate evidence, examples, and explanations based on the relevant content knowledge and skills.

Scoring Criteria

Your response will be scored holistically by two raters. The raters will use the criteria listed below when evaluating your response. The score you receive for your written performance assessment will be the combined total of the two raters' scores.

Essay Scores and Criteria
Essay Score Criteria
SCORE of 4 The "4" response reflects a thorough understanding of the relevant content knowledge and skills.
  • The response fully addresses all parts of the assignment.
  • The response clearly and accurately interprets and aligns data to an action plan or stakeholder communication.
  • The response demonstrates an accurate, highly effective application of the relevant content knowledge and skills and clearly reflects understanding of the target audience.
  • The response provides strong, relevant evidence, specific examples, and well-reasoned explanations.
SCORE of 3 The "3" response reflects a general understanding of the relevant content knowledge and skills.
  • The response addresses most or all parts of the assignment.
  • The response interprets and aligns data to an action plan or stakeholder communication.
  • The response demonstrates a generally accurate, effective application of the relevant content knowledge and skills and generally reflects understanding of the target audience.
  • The response provides sufficient evidence, some examples, and generally sound explanations.
SCORE of 2 The "2" response reflects a limited understanding of the relevant content knowledge and skills.
  • The response addresses at least some of the parts of the assignment.
  • The response partially interprets and aligns data to an action plan or stakeholder communication.
  • The response demonstrates a partially accurate, partially effective application of the relevant content knowledge and skills and partially reflects understanding of the target audience.
  • The response provides limited evidence and examples or explanations, when provided, may be only partially appropriate.
SCORE of 1 The "1" response reflects little or no understanding of the relevant content knowledge and skills.
  • The response addresses, few, if any, parts of the assignment.
  • The response inaccurately interprets and aligns data, if at all, to an action plan or stakeholder communication.
  • The response demonstrates a largely inaccurate, ineffective application of the relevant content knowledge and skills and reflects little understanding of the target audience.
  • The response provides little to no evidence, and if provided, examples or explanations are weak or inappropriate.
U The response is unscorable because it is not written to the assigned topic, is written in a language other than English, does not contain a sufficient amount of original work to score, or does not appear to be an original essay in terms of sentence structure, diction, organization, and/or content.
B There is no response to the assignment.

Sample Written Performance Assignment

Read and analyze the three exhibits provided, then write a response in which you:

Be sure to use evidence from all the exhibits in your response. Responses should be approximately 300 to 600 words.

Exhibit 1: Scenario

You are planning for your first year as a new assistant principal of a middle school in a suburban district. Your new school enrolls 707 students in grades 6, 7, and 8 and employs 46 faculty members. Approximately 56% of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, 4.5% of the students are identified as English learners, and 16.6% of the students have identified learning disabilities. Each grade level has two academic teams composed of an English language arts teacher, a science teacher, a mathematics teacher, and a social studies teacher, with one teacher serving as the team leader.

A school goal over the past several years involves student literacy, especially as it relates to academic vocabulary across content areas. Early last year, professional development activities focused on incorporating literacy strategies into all classes. The principal tells you that student achievement related to this goal is mixed across both local and state assessments. Classroom observations show a higher degree of student learning in the classes of teachers routinely using the new strategies. "The biggest hurdle may be some teachers' inability to incorporate these strategies into their instruction," says the principal. "Some of them seem unwilling to even try."

Many of the teachers who use the new strategies also regularly use their weekly meeting time as professional learning groups. The principal informs you that the meeting notes show that these teams regularly review data, plan instruction, and focus their collaboration on improving student learning. The principal has observed team meetings and reports that efforts are uneven across teams: "Just because some teams are talking about students does not mean they are talking about student learning." The principal has discussed having the more productive teams present their strategies to the other teams, but the teachers have been reluctant to do so. As the principal explains, "They do not want to appear as if they have all the answers and make their peers resentful."

The principal asks you to develop an action plan for working with the grade-level teams to move learning forward for all students. As you prepare to develop this action plan, you review data compiled from last year's team meetings as well as state assessment scores in reading and mathematics.

Exhibit 2: State Assessment Data

The table shown indicates percentages of students in grades 6, 7, and 8 who received a score of 3 or higher (1 to 5 scale) on state assessments in the past 2 years. State averages are presented in the shaded cells.

Students Receiving a Score of 3 or More on State Assessments
Students English language arts Mathematics
School State School State
% last year % 2  years  ago % last year % 2  years  ago % last year % 2  years  ago % last year % 2  years  ago
All students 52.2 51.9 51.3 52.8 54.2 61.2 53.5 59.6
Students who are economically disadvantaged 42.9 49.0 41.2 46.8 44.5 55.0 43.6 50.2
English learners 22.4 23.1 33.4 35.8 38.9 47.2 42.4 48.3
Students with disabilities 22.9 25.9 23.9 26.2 27.3 29.5 28.7 32.4

Exhibit 3: Weekly Grade-level Team Meeting Activities

The principal regularly reviews grade-level team meeting agendas and notes taken at those meetings. The following chart documents the number of times each team engaged in one of the team meeting activities between October and April of last year.

Team Meeting Activities
October to April
Team meeting activities Grade 6 Team A Grade 6 Team B Grade 7 Team C Grade 7 Team D Grade 8 Team E Grade 8 Team F
Reviewing data and assessment results 2 9 1 10 3 9
Sharing instructional practices 4 9 4 7 4 8
Planning interdisciplinary lessons 4 10 6 10 4 11
Collaborating with other faculty* 7 6 6 7 6 6
Discussing consequences for student misbehavior 11 4 8 4 7 4
Planning non-instructional activities 10 4 10 6 9 5

*(e.g., school counselor, special education teacher, educational media specialist)

Principal's comments:

Sample Responses

Sample passing and not passing responses coming soon.

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