A large school district conducting a revision of its curriculum-based assessment program for grades one through six introduced performance assessments in response to a demand for more authentic assessment associated with national concerns for standards-based educational reform. This study reports validity evidence for the locally developed reading and language arts performance assessments, administered as part of the Curriculum- Based Performance Assessment (CBAP). The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) were used as the norm-referenced measure in this school system. Assessment results from third and fourth grade for over 6,000 students were used in the analysis. Correlations were determined for performance assessment and CTBS scores. Most notable were the low correlations among the performance assessment scores and CTBS and CBAP multiple choice scales. Inspection of the correlation matrices for both grades does not provide clear validity evidence for convergent or discriminant patterns. Results of this study may lead to questioning the value of performance assessments in a school district assessment program. It may be that the cost of preparing, administering, and scoring these assessments outweighs their benefits. (Contains 3 tables and 13 references.) (SLD)