This report, Performance Assessment in an Era of Standards-Based Educational Accountability, provides a historic look at performance assessment in the United States and can inform educators and education policymakers looking for better ways to test students and schools in an era of standards-based accountability. The paper is organized as follows. First, it presents a definition of performance assessment and suggests ways to classify different types of performance tasks. Then background information on large-scale testing is provided to familiarize readers with key terms and concepts. Third, there is a review of the recent history of performance assessments in the U.S. and the claims supporting this approach to measuring student performance. Following that, the paper summarizes research on the quality, impact, and burden of performance assessments used in large-scale K-12 achievement testing. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of performance assessment to contemporary standards-based educational accountability and offers recommendations to support effective use of this form of assessment.