Rethinking Assessment: Trusting

Teachers to Evaluate Student Learning

By Katrina SchwartzJUNE 19, 2013
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After more than ten years of national education policies like No Child Left
Behind and Race to the Top, the
words accountability and assessmenthave become synonymous at many
public schools with high-stakes testing. The two government programs
have attached consequences and rewards to standardized test scores,
leading many educators to believe they have to teach to the test. But, as
the well-known argument goes, teaching prescribed math and reading
content doesnt help students build the skills like creativity, problemsolving and adaptability they need to adapt in the world outside of school.
Many educators are hoping that as Common Core State Standards roll out
across the country, teaching and assessment can focus more on problemsolving and the process of getting to an answer, rather than a focus on the
answer itself. But, even those process-oriented skills will be assessed with

a standardized test either the Smarter Balanced

Assessment or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and
Careers (PARCC).

The notion that we have to make accountability an easily measurable test

item is one notion of accountability, but by no means the most useful for
kids, for teachers or for the society as a whole.
The Smarter Balanced Consortium conducted a pilot of their test earlier
this year to help participating schools get a sense of what the tests would
be like, as well as to evaluate logistical challenges in administering the
computer-based test. AnEducation Week article explains:
The biggest idea that the pilots underscored for many educators was
that the key for getting ready for the tests is not just getting the
technology ready, but also having students and teachers know the
standards.
I think we have to make sure we are teaching and assessing with intent
on the common core, Henson [a Michigan superintendent of instruction]
says. It is really skills-based. Reading, writing, and listening skills are a
huge part of being able to take that test.
The article indicates that teachers will still be teaching to the test
theyre just hoping the test will measure how a learner thinks, not just
what theyve memorized. Thats the big question, and early studies suggest
they will.
One report [PDF] conducted by The National Center for Research on
Evaluation, Standards & Student Testing, or CRESST, at the University of
California, Los Angeles indicates that the new tests are likely to represent
important goals for deeper learning, particularly those related to
mastering and being able to apply core academic content and cognitive
strategies related to complex thinking, communication, and problem
solving.
[RELATED READING: Will the New Online Standardized Tests
Be Different?]
But other education researchers wonder if high-stakes testing in any form
can truly measure the skills that not only deepen learning, but turn a
student into a life-long learner.

People often try to figure out what makes a difference in education and
they try to find different variables that might explain that difference,
said Brent Duckor, a professor at San Jose State University focusing on
assessment. Its been harder for people to measure, and put the resources
around measuring, the so-called soft skills lets call them resiliency,
persistence, a sense of caring and engagement with school and to use
those in conjunction with the more typical academic achievement
measures. The benefits of the harder-to-quantify skills arent easily
disentangled from academic achievement scores, making it hard to prove
through tests that alternative teaching and learning styles can achieve
measurable outcomes.
The American educational system was as successful in the absence of highstakes standardized, centralized forms of assessments, as it is now, perhaps
more successful.
This tension arises clearly with one of the hottest topics in education right
now project-based learning. Many educators hope this method of
teaching content through inquiry and exploration will implicitly deepen
learning and shift it towards the goals outlined in Common Core.
If we are going to measure something, its going to take time and its
going to take resources and effort, said Duckor. And what weve seen is a
lot less attention on measuring those skills in any rigorous or reliable
way. It would take much more time and money to really develop
assessments that measure creativity or resilience, but states have neither
the time, money nor political will to do so, Duckor said.
To the extent that policymakers can go back to the drawing board and
say, How could Smarter Balanced find ways to investigate the validity and
the reliability of teacher claims, we could say there would be an advance,
Duckor said. Hed like to see more alternative methods of assessment
used.
School-based accountability, where student achievement and progression
is determined by teachers, not a state test, is one such method thats
already been studied by researchers. New York Citys Central Park East
Secondary School, a progressive poster child in the 1990s, provides an
example of how school-based accountability works.
[RELATED READING: How Do You Measure Learning?]
Central Park East developed systems to assess student work that meet
the criteria for authentic assessment that well-known researchers like
Stanfords Linda Darling Hammond have determined to be successful. In
a soon-to-be-published article, Duckor and co-author Daniel

Perlsteinargue that the school evaluated projects by asking students to

demonstrate knowledge, understand various perspectives on it, connect it
to other learning, make conclusions based on varying sets of conditions
and be able to discuss its relevance. Most of these elements were included
in subject-based portfolios that students created and had to defend in
front of a committee that included teachers, students and outside adults.
But Central Park Easts modelcouldnt hold up to the strong pressures for
standardized testing. The pressures to develop easily measured and easily
routinized forms of assessment, and easily measured and easily routinized
forms of teaching and learning, in turn, made the school increasingly less
successful and less central to reform, said Daniel Perlstein, professor of
education history at the University of California, Berkeley. There has
always been a reform movement pushing for more democratic and socially
oriented education in the U.S., but historically those efforts havent faired
well on tests.
It would take much more time and money to really develop assessments
that measure creativity or resilience, but states have neither the time,
money nor political will to do so.
The American educational system was as successful in the absence of
high-stakes standardized, centralized forms of assessments, as it is now,
perhaps more successful, said Perlstein. There are various forms of
accountability and the notion that we have to make accountability an
easily measurable test item is one notion of accountability, but by no
means the most useful for kids, for teachers or for the society as a whole.
Perlstein points to other measures of a schools success. Are parents
satisfied with the education their children are receiving? Are students
engaged and excited to come to school? Those are measures of
accountability that dont carry much weight when it comes to funding,
teachers salaries or national rankings, but might be the most important
for encouraging life-long learners.
Moving away from tests as the only means to measure knowledge, both at
the school level and on state tests, frees teachers up to teach in more
dynamic ways. Its a question of whose accountability and for whose
good, said Duckor. And what infrastructure do we have to support
communities that would like to have school-based accountability, but at
this point are being measured by somebody elses yardstick?
For Perlstein, it comes down to the basic fact that teachers, students and
schools have a deep capacity for engaging, thoughtful work, but arent
often given the credit for their efforts. In schools across the country
teachers are trying to figure out how to do their job better, said Perlstein.

The systems of accountability we have, rather than helping them do that,

typically get in the way of that.
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/06/19/will-new-tests-measure-any-valuableskills/

How Can We Make Assessments Meaningful?

JU LY 31, 201 2

928

SHARES

I think meaningful assessments can come in many shapes and sizes. In fact, to be thoroughly engaging
and to draw the best work out of the students, assessments should come in different formats.
Thankfully, with the Common Core standards exemplifying the 4Cs -- Creativity and Critical Thinking
(through performance-based assessments), Collaboration, and Communication (through the use of
interdisciplinary writing) -- we are looking at a more fluid future in testing formats. As long as the format
itself is aligned with real-world skills, a meaningful assessment does not need to be lockstep with a
particular structure any more.
When I think about my own definition of a "meaningful assessment," I think the test must meet certain
requirements. The assessment must have value other than "because it's on the test." It must intend to
impact the world beyond the student "self," whether it is on the school site, in the outlying community, the
state, country, world, etc. Additionally, the assessment should incorporate skills that students need for
their future. That is, the test must assess skills other than merely content. It must also test how eloquently
the students communicate their content.

Criteria for a Meaningful Classroom Assessment

To address these requirements, I ask myself the following guided questions:
1.

Does the assessment involve project-based learning?

2.

Does it allow for student choice of topics?

3.

Is it inquiry based?

4.

Does it ask that students use some level of internet literacy to find their answers?

5.

Does it involve independent problem solving?

6.

Does it incorporate the 4Cs?

7.

Do the students need to communicate their knowledge via writing in some way?

8.

Does the final draft or project require multiple modalities (visual, oral, data, etc.) in its
presentation?

Clearly not all assessments achieve every single characteristic listed above. But in our attempt to address
some of these elements, we will have made our classroom assessments so much more meaningful. It is
vital that students connect with the value of their assessments. After all, if a student trusts that the
assessment is meaningful and will help them later on, it helps with both their achievement and with your
own classroom management.

Transparency and Why It's Important

It's important that we inform the students why a particular assessment has value. Some teachers still balk
at this job, as if students should just trust that what we do in school has value to what happens outside of
school. However, kids are smart. They know that bubbling with a #2 pencil is antiquated. They know that
much of the content we teach them can be found through Google. But as savvy as students are, they
don't know everything about communicating their content, and we owe it to them to make sure that not
only are our tests aligned with skills they must know for their future, but to make sure that we've been
transparent in our rationale.
So how can high-stakes assessments be meaningful to students? For one thing, high-stakes tests
shouldn't be so high stakes. It's inauthentic. They should and still can be a mere snapshot of ability.
Additionally, those occasional assessments need to take a back seat to the real learning and achievement
going on in every day assessments observed by the teacher.
The key here, however, is to assess every day. Not in boring, multiple-choice daily quizzes, but
with informal, engaging assessments that take more than just a snapshot of a student's knowledge at one
moment in time.
But frankly, any assessment that sounds cool can still be made meaningless. It's how the students
interact with the test that makes it meaningful. With the 4 Cs in mind, ask if the assessment allows for the
following:

Creativity Are they students creating or just regurgitating? Are they being given credit for presenting
something other than what was described?
Collaboration Have they spent some time working with others to formulate their thoughts, to brainstorm,
or to seek feedback from peers?
Critical Thinking Are the students doing more work than the teacher in seeking out information and
problem solving?
Communication Does the assessment emphasize the need to communicate the content well? Is writing
involved, as well as other modalities? If asked to teach the content to other students, what methods will
the student use to communicate the information and help embed it more deeply?

Rubric on Meaningful Assessments

So as an activity for myself, I created a rubric to look at whenever I was wondering if an assessment was
going to be a waste of time or was going to connect with the students. (Click the chart to download the
PDF.)

Click to download the PDF of this chart. (275 KB)

Credit: Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Another way to ensure that an assessment is meaningful, of course, is to simply ask the students what
they thought. Design a survey after each major unit or assessment. Or, better yet, if you want to
encourage students to really focus on the requirements on a rubric, add a row that's only for them to fill
out for you. That way, the rubric's feedback is more of a give-and-take, and you get feedback on the
assessment's level of meaningfulness as soon as possible.

Click to download the PDF of this chart. (209 KB)

Credit: Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Download the example (left) of a quick rubric I designed for a general writing assessment. I included a
row that the participants could fill out that actually gave me quick feedback on how meaningful or helpful
they believed the assessment was towards their own learning. As an instructor and lesson designer, I
want a quick turnaround between when I assign an assessment and if I need to adjust the assessment to
meet the needs of future learners. By also giving them a space to fill out, they own the rubric even more,
and will pay more attention to what I fill out knowing that I gave them an opportunity to also give me
feedback. It's one way the students and I can learn reciprocally.
So how do you ensure that your classroom assessments are meaningful?
HEATHER WOLPERT- GAWRON'S PROFILE

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/making-assessments-meaningful-heather-wolpertgawron

Healthier Testing Made Easy: The Idea of Authentic

Assessment
Tests don't just measure absorption of facts. They teach what we value.

Grant Wiggins
Author, Consultant, Teacher, Coach
A PR IL 3, 2006

RELATED TAGS: Assessment,Brain-Based Learning,All Grades

91

SHARES

Credit: Thomas Reis

Here's a radical idea: We need more assessment, not less.
Seem crazy? Substitute feedback for assessment, and you'll better understand what I mean. The point of
assessment in education is to advance learning, not to merely audit absorption of facts. That's true
whether we're talking about that fourth-period pop quiz, the school play, or the state test. No one ever
mastered a complicated idea or skill the first -- or fifth -- time. To reach any genuine standard, we need
lots of trials, errors, and adjustments based on feedback.
Think of assessment, then, as information for improving.
This idea takes a while to get used to if you teach, test, and move on. The research could not be clearer,
though: Increasing formative assessment is the key to improvement on tests of all kinds, including
traditional ones. And more "authentic" and comprehensive forms of assessment provide not only
significant gains on conventional tests but also more useful feedback (because the tasks are more
realistic).

What do I mean by "authentic assessment"? It's simply performances and product requirements that are
faithful to real-world demands, opportunities, and constraints. The students are tested on their ability to
"do" the subject in context, to transfer their learning effectively.
The best assessment is thus "educative," not onerous. The tasks educate learners about the kinds of
challenges adults actually face, and the use of feedback is built into the process. In the real world, that's
how we learn and are assessed: on our ability to learn from results.
Good feedback and opportunities to use it are extremely important in this scenario. In their seminal
report Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment, British researchers Paul
Black and Dylan Wiliam showed that improving the quality of classroom feedback offers the greatest
performance gains of any single instructional approach. "Formative assessment is an essential
component," they wrote, and its development can raise standards of achievement. "We know of no other
way of raising standards for which such a strong prima facie case can be made."
This just makes sense. The more you teach without finding out who understands the information and who
doesn't, the greater the likelihood that only already-proficient students will succeed.
Richard J. Light, Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at Harvard University, buttressed these findings in
his book Making the Most out of College: Students Speak Their Minds:
"The big point -- it comes up over and over again as crucial -- is the importance of quick and detailed
feedback. Students overwhelmingly report that the single most important ingredient for making a course
effective is getting rapid response on assignments and quizzes. ... An overwhelming majority are
convinced that their best learning takes place when they have a chance to submit an early version of their
work, get detailed feedback and criticism, and then hand in a final revised version. ... Students improve
and are engaged when they receive feedback (and opportunities to use it) on realistic tasks requiring
transfer at the heart of learning goals and real-world demands."

Credit: Thomas Reis

Understanding as Transfer
A good education makes knowledge, skill, and ideas useful. Assessment should determine whether you
can use your learning, not merely whether you learned stuff.
Achieving transferability means you have learned how to adapt prior learning to novel and important
situations. In an education for understanding, learners are constantly challenged to take various ideas
and resources (such as content) they encounter and become adept at applying them to increasingly
complicated contexts.
When I was a soccer coach, I learned the hard way about transfer and the need to better assess for it.
The practice drills did not seem to transfer into fluid, flexible, and fluent game performance. It often
appeared, in fact, as if all the work in practice were for naught, as players either wandered around
purposelessly or reacted only to the most obvious immediate needs.
The epiphany came during a game, from the mouth of a player. In my increasing frustration, I started
yelling, "Give and go!" "Three on two!" "Use it, use it -- all the drills we worked on!" At that point, the player
stopped dribbling in the middle of the field and yelled back, "I can't see it now! The other team won't line
up like the drill for me!"
That's both a clear picture of the problem and the road to the solution: too many sideline drills of an
isolated skill, and not enough testing of it; too great a gap between what the simplified drill was teaching
and testing and what the performance demands.
As the authors of How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School put it:
"A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings. ...
Many classroom activities... focus on facts or details rather than larger themes of causes and
consequences. ... Understanding how and when to put knowledge to use... is an important characteristic
of expertise. Learning in multiple contexts most likely affects this aspect of transfer."
Fair enough, you may say, but what about the tests we are obligated to administer? Shouldn't we just
mimic their format? Oddly enough, the answer is no.
Consider: Once a year, we go to the doctor for a physical exam. The doctor performs a few tests, which
yield a few useful indicators of one's health.
Now, suppose we are terribly concerned about the final numbers. What we might do, in our panicky state
prior to each physical, is practice for it and focus all our energy on it. If our doctor knew of our actions, her
response would surely be, "Whoa! You have mixed up cause and effect. The best way to 'pass' your
physical is to live a healthful life on a regular basis -- exercise, decrease fat intake, get sufficient sleep,
avoid tobacco, etc."

Note that none of the elements of true healthfulness -- your diet, fitness regimen, or management of
stress -- are directly tested; doctors use indirect indicators of blood pressure, weight, skin tone and color,
and so on. Thus, the effects of your healthful regimen will be reflected in the test indicators.
Like doctors with their patients, state education agencies give schools an annual checkup via such testing
that serves as a proxy for real performance. A state test, like a physical, consists of indicators -- a set of
items that sample indirectly from the broader domain of the content supposedly addressed through a local
educational regimen based on the standards. Our job is to teach to the standards, not the test. Many
educators forget this.

Credit: Thomas Reis

High Standards
The local task is to honor the standards, and the state evaluates local work against those standards
through its tests. And all state standards identify the kinds of authentic work that should occur in
instruction and assessment locally. Here are a few examples:
According to the Georgia Performance Standard ELA4W2, "The student produces a response to literature
that

ENGAGES the reader by establishing a context, creating a speaker's voice, and otherwise
developing reader interest.

ADVANCES a judgment that is interpretive, evaluative, or reflective.

SUPPORTS judgments through references to the text, other works, authors, or nonprint media, or
references to personal knowledge.

DEMONSTRATES an understanding of the literary work.

EXCLUDES extraneous details and inappropriate information.

PROVIDES a sense of closure to the writing."

The Vermont standard H&SS7-8:1 requires that "students initiate an inquiry by asking focusing and
probing questions that will lead to independent research and incorporate concepts of personal,
community, or global relevance (e.g., What are causes of low voter turnout?)."
Like a physical, the annual test can be useful even if the test questions seem superficial. All the test
maker need do is show a correlation between a set of right answers on items with a related set of results
on more complicated performances. Further, because the phrasing of the questions is unknown, most of
the test questions involve mini-transfer: If you really understand the topic, you should have no trouble
handling a question that looks a little different from the questions the teacher asked. If you learned only by
rote, however, a novel question will stump you.
None of us likes the overemphasis on these tests, which provide precious little useful and timely feedback
(especially in states where the test isn't made public -- most states, unfortunately.) But that doesn't mean
the test is worthless. So, though it would seem silly to practice the physical exam as a way to be healthy,
this is in effect what many teachers do (and are encouraged to do). Educators end up focusing locally on
simple tests of "plug-and-chug," or recall, in the belief that this is the best preparation for standardized
tests. The format of the test, in other words, misleads us into doing the equivalent of practicing for a
physical, instead of teaching for meaning and transfer.

"Intellectual Work" Works

The good news? You can have your cake and eat it, too. Research by Fred M. Newmann and his
colleagues on "intellectual works" (previously called "authentic achievement") showed how more realworld and complex performance assessment improves student achievement as measured by national and
state tests. Researchers analyzed classroom writing and mathematics assignments in grades three, six,
and eight over the course of three years. In addition, they evaluated student work generated by the
various assignments. Finally, the researchers examined correlations among the nature of classroom
assignments, the quality of student work, and scores on standardized tests.
Assignments were rated according to the degree to which they required "authentic" intellectual work,
which "involves original application of knowledge and skills, rather than just routine use of facts and
procedures. It also entails disciplined inquiry into the details of a particular problem and results in a
product or presentation that has meaning or value beyond success in school."
This study concluded that "students who received assignments requiring more challenging intellectual
work also achieved greater than average gains on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in reading and
mathematics, and demonstrated higher performance in reading, mathematics, and writing on the Illinois
Goals Assessment Program. Contrary to some expectations, we found high-quality assignments in some
very disadvantaged Chicago classrooms and [found] that all students in these classes benefited from
exposure to such instruction. We conclude, therefore, [that] assignments calling for more authentic
intellectual work actually improve student scores on conventional tests."

Doesn't this finding again just reflect common sense? The more students receive challenging, interesting
work demands, the better they do on simple measures.

Assess, Don't Audit

A good local assessment system does more than audit performance. It is deliberately designed to model
authentic work and to improve performance. The aim of teaching is not to master state tests, but to meet
worthy intellectual standards. We must recapture the primary aim of assessment: to help students better
learn and teachers to better instruct.
All current state and national tests merely audit student performance using simplified indirect test items. It
is a mere once-a-year checkup, like a doctor's physical. Sadly, fearful educators understandably feel
driven to teach to the test instead of working to ensure that students meet genuine academic standards
(and letting the test results follow naturally). Local faculties unwittingly mimic the audit function locally
instead of building a robust feedback system. All other needs for data, such as accountability testing and
program evaluation, come second and must not be allowed to pervert the system, as so often happens
now.
Assessment tasks must model and demand important real-world work. Focused and accountable
teaching requires ongoing assessment of the core tasks that embody the aims of schooling: whether
students can wisely transfer knowledge with understanding in simulations of complex adult intellectual
tasks. Only by ensuring that the assessment system models such (genuine) performance will student
achievement and teaching be improved over time. And only if that system holds all teachers responsible
for results (as opposed to only those administering high-stakes testing in four of the twelve years of
schooling) can it improve.
Students are entitled to a more educative and user-friendly assessment system. They deserve far more
feedback -- and opportunities to use it -- as part of the local assessment process. Those tasks should
recur, as in the visual and performing arts and in sports, so there are many chances to get good at vital
work. When assessment properly focuses teaching and learning in this way, student self-assessment and
self-adjustment become a critical part of all instruction and are themselves assessed.
Tests don't just measure; they teach what we value. Should we provide practice on traditional tests? Of
course. But we need to stop thinking like the naive coach who thinks all those drills are sufficient for
mastering the game of transfer. Unsatisfying (and sometimes unacceptable) results will continue until we
no longer see assessment as mere typical testing and as what you do after teaching and learning are
over.
GRANT WIGGINS, PRESIDENT OF AUTHENTIC EDUCATION, IN HOPEWELL, NEW JERSEY, IS
COAUTHOR, WITH JAY MCTIGHE, OF UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN .

Get Started

Authentic Education

Black, Paul, and Wiliam Dylan, "Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom
Assessment," Phi Delta Kappan, 80 (2): 139(9)

Bransford, John, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, ed., How People Learn: Brain, Mind,
Experience, and School, (National Academies Press, 2000)

Newmann, Fred M., Anthony S. Bryk, and Jenny K. Nagaoka, "Authentic Intellectual Work and
Standardized Tests: Conflict or Coexistence?" (Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of
Chicago, 2001)

http://www.edutopia.org/authentic-assessment-grant-wiggins

Authentic Assessment: New Ways to Measure

Student Performance
JU LY 30, 200 8

From an Edutopia reader comes this question: "With so many of today's schools focused on state
achievement tests, many teachers are 'teaching to the test.' However, this does not adequately prepare
students for life outside of school. Does anyone have any suggestions for the alternate assessment that
this article was describing? I am looking for some way to increase student learning while maintaining state
standards at the same time."
We can agree on the limitations of standardized tests, but as teachers, we must nonetheless find ways to
measure student learning. In place of narrow tests, innovative educators are developing new authentic
assessments. Here are some interesting new looks at the subject:

Portfolios
Ted Nellen proposes digital portfolios and shares a suggestion he made recently to Al Gore.

Peer Review
"I suggested as a means of fostering authentic assessment that we have the scholars produce Web
pages that are public and can be peer reviewed. The work of the scholars can be digitized and copied to
CDs, DVDs, and flash drives. A national clearinghouse could be established for archive purposes. The

Web pages can be sent to colleges as part of the entrance application. They can be used when a scholar
moves from one town to another, across state lines or within a state. The work of the scholar tells us more
than any test score ever will."

Exhibition
Another form of assessment is exhibition. The Coalition of Essential Schools recently held a National
Exhibition Month to showcase student work.
"This year's National Exhibition Month was a successful campaign, as throughout the month of May (in
some cases in April and June), schools and support organizations across the country made their
exhibition work public and advocated for the use of exhibitions in their local contexts.
"Close to a hundred schools and organizations across twenty-five states participated, recognizing and
documenting student exhibitions, submitting letters to the editor of local papers, hosting public events to
showcase exhibitions, and educating media and local leaders about the benefits of exhibitions."

But Wait -- There's More

For a general overview of what authentic assessment is all about, Jonathan Mueller has put together
the Authentic Assessment Toolbox.
Last, the University of Wisconsin at Stout has put together a great set ofauthentic-assessment
resources for teachers.
Do you know of any other resources or have suggestions? Please share your thoughts.

http://www.edutopia.org/authentic-assessment-measure-student-performance

The Case for Authentic Assessment

by Grant Wiggins

WHAT IS AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT?

Assessment is authentic when we directly examine student performance on worthy intellectual
tasks. Traditional assessment, by contract, relies on indirect or proxy 'items'efficient, simplistic
substitutes from which we think valid inferences can be made about the student's performance at
those valued challenges.
Do we want to evaluate student problem-posing and problem-solving in mathematics?
experimental research in science? speaking, listening, and facilitating a discussion? doing
document-based historical inquiry? thoroughly revising a piece of imaginative writing until it
"works" for the reader? Then let our assessment be built out of such exemplary intellectual

challenges.
Further comparisons with traditional standardized tests will help to clarify what "authenticity"
means when considering assessment design and use:

Authentic assessments require students to be effective performers with acquired

knowledge. Traditional tests tend to reveal only whether the student can recognize, recall
or "plug in" what was learned out of context. This may be as problematic as inferring
driving or teaching ability from written tests alone. (Note, therefore, that the debate is not
"either-or": there may well be virtue in an array of local and state assessment instruments
as befits the purpose of the measurement.)

Authentic assessments present the student with the full array of tasks that mirror the
priorities and challenges found in the best instructional activities: conducting research;
writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent
political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. Conventional tests are usually
limited to paper-and-pencil, one- answer questions.

Authentic assessments attend to whether the student can craft polished, thorough and
justifiable answers, performances or products. Conventional tests typically only ask the
student to select or write correct responses--irrespective of reasons. (There is rarely an
adequate opportunity to plan, revise and substantiate responses on typical tests, even
when there are open-ended questions). As a result,

Authentic assessment achieves validity and reliability by emphasizing and standardizing

the appropriate criteria for scoring such (varied) products; traditional testing standardizes
objective "items" and, hence, the (one) right answer for each.

"Test validity" should depend in part upon whether the test simulates real-world "tests" of
ability. Validity on most multiple-choice tests is determined merely by matching items to
the curriculum content (or through sophisticated correlations with other test results).

Authentic tasks involve "ill-structured" challenges and roles that help students rehearse for
the complex ambiguities of the "game" of adult and professional life. Traditional tests are
more like drills, assessing static and too-often arbitrarily discrete or simplistic elements of
those activities.

Beyond these technical considerations, the move to reform assessment is based upon the premise
that assessment should primarily support the needs of learners. Thus, secretive tests composed of
proxy items and scores that have no obvious meaning or usefulness undermine teachers' ability to
improve instruction and students' ability to improve their performance. We rehearse for and teach
to authentic teststhink of music and military trainingwithout compromising validity.
The best tests always teach students and teachers alike the kind of work that most matters; they
are enabling and forward-looking, not just reflective of prior teaching. In many colleges and all
professional settings the essential challenges are known in advancethe upcoming report, recital,
Board presentation, legal case, book to write, etc. Traditional tests, by requiring complete secrecy
for their validity, make it difficult for teachers and students to rehearse and gain the confidence
that comes from knowing their performance obligations. (A known challenge also makes it possible
to hold all students to higher standards).
WHY DO WE NEED TO INVEST IN THESE LABOR-INTENSIVE FORMS OF ASSESSMENT?
While multiple-choice tests can be valid indicators or predictors of academic performance, too

often our tests mislead students and teachers about the kinds of work that should be mastered.
Norms are not standards; items are not real problems; right answers are not rationales.
What most defenders of traditional tests fail to see is that it is the form, not the content of the test
that is harmful to learning; demonstrations of the technical validity of standardized tests should
not be the issue in the assessment reform debate. Students come to believe that learning is
cramming; teachers come to believe that tests are after-the-fact, imposed nuisances composed of
contrived questionsirrelevant to their intent and success. Both parties are led to believe that
right answers matter more than habits of mind and the justification of one's approach and results.
A move toward more authentic tasks and outcomes thus improves teaching and learning: students
have greater clarity about their obligations (and are asked to master more engaging tasks), and
teachers can come to believe that assessment results are both meaningful and useful for
improving instruction.
If our aim is merely to monitor performance then conventional testing is probably adequate. If our
aim is to improve performance across the board then the tests must be composed of exemplary
tasks, criteria and standards.
WON'T AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT BE TOO EXPENSIVE AND TIME-CONSUMING?
The costs are deceptive: while the scoring of judgment-based tasks seems expensive when
compared to multiple-choice tests (about $2 per student vs. 1 cent) the gains to teacher
professional development, local assessing, and student learning are many. As states like California
and New York have found (with their writing and hands-on science tests) significant improvements
occur locally in the teaching and assessing of writing and science when teachers become involved
and invested in the scoring process.
If costs prove prohibitive, sampling may well be the appropriate responsethe strategy employed
in California, Vermont and Connecticut in their new performance and portfolio assessment
projects. Whether through a sampling of many writing genres, where each student gets one
prompt only; or through sampling a small number of all student papers and school-wide portfolios;
or through assessing only a small sample of students, valuable information is gained at a
minimum cost.
And what have we gained by failing to adequately assess all the capacities and outcomes we
profess to value simply because it is time-consuming, expensive, or labor-intensive? Most other
countries routinely ask students to respond orally and in writing on their major teststhe same
countries that outperform us on international comparisons. Money, time and training are routinely
set aside to insure that assessment is of high quality. They also correctly assume that high
standards depend on the quality of day-to-day local assessmentfurther offsetting the apparent
high cost of training teachers to score student work in regional or national assessments.
WILL THE PUBLIC HAVE ANY FAITH IN THE OBJECTIVITY AND RELIABILITY OF
JUDGMENT-BASED SCORES?
We forget that numerous state and national testing programs with a high degree of credibility and
integrity have for many years operated using human judges:

the New York Regents exams, parts of which have included essay questions since their
inceptionand which are scored locally (while audited by the state);

the Advanced Placement program which uses open-ended questions and tasks, including
not only essays on most tests but the performance-based tests in the Art Portfolio and

Foreign Language exams;

state-wide writing assessments in two dozen states where model papers, training of
readers, papers read "blind" and procedures to prevent bias and drift gain adequate
reliability;

the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Congressionally-mandated

assessment, uses numerous open-ended test questions and writing prompts (and
successfully piloted a hands-on test of science performance);

newly-mandated performance-based and portfolio-based state-wide testing in Arizona,

California, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, and New York.

Though the scoring of standardized tests is not subject to significant error, the procedure by which
items are chosen, and the manner in which norms or cut-scores are established is often quite
subjectiveand typically immune from public scrutiny and oversight.
Genuine accountability does not avoid human judgment. We monitor and improve judgment
through training sessions, model performances used as exemplars, audit and oversight policies as
well as through such basic procedures as having disinterested judges review student work "blind"
to the name or experience of the student--as occurs routinely throughout the professional, athletic
and artistic worlds in the judging of performance.
Authentic assessment also has the advantage of providing parents and community members with
directly observable products and understandable evidence concerning their students' performance;
the quality of student work is more discernible to laypersons than when we must rely on
translations of talk about stanines and renorming.
Ultimately, as the researcher Lauren Resnick has put it, What you assess is what you get; if you
don't test it you won't get it. To improve student performance we must recognize that essential
intellectual abilities are falling through the cracks of conventional testing.

ADDITIONAL READING
Archbald, D. & Newmann, F. (1989) "The Functions of Assessment and the Nature of Authentic
Academic Achievement," in Berlak (ed.) Assessing Achievement: Toward the development of a
New Science of Educational Testing . Buffalo, NY: SUNY Press.
Frederiksen, J. & Collins, A. (1989) "A Systems Approach to Educational Testing," Educational
Researcher, 18, 9 (December).
National Commission on Testing and Public Policy (1990) From Gatekeeper to Gateway:
Transforming Testing in America. Chestnut Hill, MA: NCTPP, Boston College.
Wiggins, G. (1989) "A True Test: Toward More Authentic and Equitable Assessment," Phi Delta
Kappan, 70, 9 (May).
Wolf, D. (1989) "Portfolio Assessment: Sampling Student Work," Educational Leadership 46, 7, pp.
35-39 (April).

1990, 2004 Grant Wiggins

About the Author: Mr. Wiggins, a researcher and consultant on school reform issues, is a widelyknown advocate of authentic assessment in education. This article is based on materials that he
prepared for the California Assessment Program.
This article originally appeared in Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, an online electronic
journal.

Behavior Expectations and How to Teach Them

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Imagine that a student enters an English class to find that it's that most dreaded of days -- graded paper
pass-back day. As he receives his paper, his teacher begins to criticize him for his mistakes saying, "You
should have known better than to write your thesis that way." What if the teacher went on to add, "That's
the third time this month. What am I going to do with you?" before sending him to the office for his
mistake?

Students who make academic mistakes are given time to review, relearn, and reassess until they master
the content. But with students who fail to meet behavior expectations, more often than not we respond by
assuming willful disobedience, removing students from the classroom, and assigning disciplinary
consequences. When our typical responses for behavior are applied to academic issues, it's easy to see
the disparity.
Because educators are well trained to deal with academic failures and missteps, we know that this isn't
the way to handle the issues with an academic assignment. Somehow, though, it's become an acceptable
way to address student behavior.

The "He Was Told So He Should Know" Problem

As a high school teacher, I certainly didn't think that I needed to teach behavior. I was under the
impression that if I posted rules and reviewed them in class on the first day, I had done all that was
required. As a result, even when it didn't work, I often found myself returning to my list of posted rules
when it was time to "review expectations." With academic content, teachers have a number of tricks up
their sleeves. They start with what students know and build from there using great models, repetition, and
novelty to make student learning memorable.
Here's what I wonder: What would happen if we taught behavior expectations with our best instructional
practices?
Instead of looking at students as willfully disobeying all the good manners they've been taught, what if we
put a process in place to teach our expectations for student behavior with the best practices often
reserved for academic work? Approaching behavior expectations with our best instructional practices will
allow students to internalize our expectations better and for longer.

A Better Way
Here's a process along with a few starter ideas to move you in the right direction, whether you're an
individual teacher or thinking about this on a campus-wide scale.
1.

Be clear with your expectations.

2.

Draft a list of memorable ways to teach these expectations (be sure to include models).

3.

Estimate how often you will need to reteach this lesson.

Create a timeline.

Establish a list of signs that indicate when it is time to reteach this expectation.

Let's use a problem that could happen on any campus: students who don't pick up after themselves.

At the beginning of last year, we noticed that students weren't picking up their trash between lunches like
we needed them to do. At a high school, this is something we expected them to know, but when we
noticed the gap between their behavior and our expectation, we decided to approach the issue proactively
using this process.
With our aim set on every student picking up his or her own trash after lunch, we calculated how long our
custodial staff actually had to clean each of the 60+ table tops in the cafeteria between lunches and asked
students to clean tables at that speed. We captured their efforts on video. The result was entertaining and
proved our point: Since the custodial staff cannot pick up the trash from every table in time for you to sit at
a table that doesn't have trash on it, let's all pick up our trash.
We came back to these reminders three times throughout the year. We chose hot spots (the beginning of
the year, the first week of January, and the week after spring break) to reiterate our expectations. With
these clearly defined expectations, students responded in the way that we hoped.

What Could You Do?

If you're a classroom teacher and are interested in trying out this idea, here are a few questions that might
serve as a good point of departure for teaching discipline:

What should students do when they hear my signal?

What are the teacher's expectations when students enter the classroom?

What are the teacher's expectations for electronic devices in the classroom?

What should students do when they return from being absent?

If you want to take the schoolwide approach, consider creating lessons to consistently establish these
expectations at the campus level:

Be on time to class.

Follow the dress code.

Eat food in the cafeteria (and only in the cafeteria).

At sporting events, yell for your team instead of against the opponent.

In the hallways, stop and listen if an adult addresses you.

It's What's Right

On the first day of school, my English III students often heard my "you're a day closer to being high school
graduates than being middle schoolers -- so let's act like it" speech. It was pretty short little speech -- in
fact, you just read most of it -- but I felt that was an appropriate way to address things because, by the
time students enter junior year of high school, they know how to behave, right?
It wasn't fun for me to realize that I was the one who needed to make the big change, but it needed to
happen. I'm glad it did, and so were my students.
Teaching behavior expectations in the way that we know students really learn -- with models and
repetition -- will help them learn your expectations, and help you help them learn in your classroom.
How do you teach behavior expectations in your classroom or school? How successful are you? Please
tell us about it in the comments section of this post.

When Grading Harms Student Learning

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There are so many forces at work that make educators grade, and grade frequently. For sports eligibility,
coaches constantly look at grades to see if a student is at an academic level that will allow him or her to
play. Colleges review transcripts to examine what type of courses students took and their corresponding
grades. Teachers must follow policy that demands them to enter a certain amount of grades every week,
month, or marking period. There's no stopping it. However, we need to reflect upon policies and practices
like this -- and possibly consider regulating them. Is grading the focus, or is learning the focus? Yes,

grades should and can reflect student learning, but often they can get in the way and actually harm
student learning.

The Dreaded Zero

I used to give out zeros in the hopes that it would force students to do work and learn. This was a terrible
idea! I'm so happy that I received the professional development and resources to challenge my thinking
on how I was graded as a student. Myron Dueck notes that students need to care about consequences,
and many students simply don't care about zeros. In fact, some of them will say, "Fine, I'll take the zero,"
which totally defeats the intended purpose and in fact destroys any leverage that I have to help students
learn. Zeros do not reflect student learning. They reflect compliance. Instead of zeros, we should enter
incompletes, and use these moments to correct behavioral errors and mistakes. Often, one zero can
mathematically destroy a student's grade and pollute an overall metric that should reflect student learning.
Here, grading is getting in the way of truly helping a student, as well as showing what that student really
knows.

Points Off for Late Work

I'm guilty of this one as well. Similar to using zeros, when students didn't turn in work on time, I threated
them with a deduction in points. Not only didn't this correct the behavior, but it also meant that behavioral
issues were clouding the overall grade report. Instead of reflecting that students had learned, the grade
served as an inaccurate reflection of the learning goal. Well, I certainly learned from this experience, and
instead began using late work as a time to actually address the behavioral issue of turning in late work. It
was a teachable moment. I had students reflect on what got in the way, apply their problem-solving skills
to these issues, and set new goals. Students should learn the responsibility of turning in work on time, but
not at the cost of a grade that doesn't actually represent learning.

Grading "Practice"
Many of our assignments are "practice," assigned for students to build fluency and practice a content or
skill. Students are often "coming to know" rather than truly knowing. Consequently, these assignments are
formative assessments, reflecting a step in the learning process and not a final outcome or goal.
Formative assessment should inform instruction. It should not be graded. If we assign a grade to failed
practice, the overall grade won't reflect what they learned. It won't be a reflection of success, and it may
even deter students from trying again and learning. Practice assignments and homework can be
assessed, but they shouldn't be graded.

Grading Instead of Teaching

As mentioned earlier, many teachers are required to enter grades on a frequent basis. While this policy
may be well intended, in practice it can become a nightmare and run afoul to the intent. Districts and
schools often call for frequent grades so that students, parents, and other stakeholders know what a child
knows, and what he or she needs to learn next. This is a great intent. In fact, we should formatively

assess our students and give everyone access to the "photo album" of learning rather than a single
"snapshot." However, if we educators do nothing but grade, we rob ourselves of the time that we need to
teach. We've all been in a situation where grading piles up, and so we put the class on a task to make
time for grading. This is wrong, and it should be the other way around. Teaching and learning should take
precedence over grading and entering grades into grade books. If educators are spending an inordinate
amount of time grading rather than teaching and assessing students, then something needs to change.

Hope
Our work as educators is providing hope to our students. If I use zeros, points off for late work, and the
like as tools for compliance, I don't create hope. Instead, I create fear of failure and anxiety in learning. If
we truly want our classrooms to be places for hope, then our grading practices must align with that
mission. Luckily, standards-based grading, mastery-based grading, and competency-based learning are
making strides in many schools, districts, and states. These methods more accurately align with the
premise that "it's never too late to learn." If you want to learn more about equitable grading practices, read
work by Ken O'Connor, Myron Dueck, Dylan Wiliam, and Rick Wormeli.
With that, I will leave you with an essential question to ponder: How can we grade and assess in a way
that provides hope to all students?

Going Beyond Group Assessments for Learning

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Photo credit: U.S. Army RDECOM via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Whenever announcing group or team assessments, the typical response by students and parents is
"Groan." Even parents who are teachers do the same. Individual assessments are missing in teamwork.
Group assessments are useful for managing a large number of students and their work. Collecting data
on eight teams of four students each seems more time-efficient than assessing 32 students. Right?
The issue is that group work creates problems for knowing what each student understands and does not
understand. A common complaint is that a few students do the work, while their teammates stand aside
and get credit for the assessed skills. Also, parents don't want their child's grades to suffer because the
group work by other students was below quality. In all of these cases, collecting group data lacks any
validity for what each student knows and does not know as an individual.
For example, consider the classic group presentation at the end of a unit. If four students team up to give
a ten-minute presentation, each will have about two minutes of talk-time to demonstrate a deep
understanding of the unit's major concepts and skills. Given the limited time for each presentation part,
demonstrating content understanding based on depths of knowledgewould be shallow. In this example,
the limited time is likely helpful to give feedback on demonstration of college and career readiness skills
like communication and collaboration.
Eliminate assessment fog from group assessments. Consider the following guidelines for students to work
in groups while checking for each individual's understanding.

Observe This Rule

Rule 1: All academic assessments are individual. Rule 2: Refer to rule 1. Follow this mantra. The
result is clear data on how each student is progressing. Any data used for individual coaching or recording
of grades are intentionally individual, so there can be little chance of foggy data that might misrepresent
the learner's progress. Use a variety of tests, quizzes, journals, and interviews. A side benefit is that
parents and students feel more confident about the work, because students have a sense of being in
control of their own destiny. Prior to the group presentation, they could each write a position paper that
addresses the key concepts, which is then assessed for feedback and academic recording. The team
collects these papers to use for crafting the presentation. Another option is to give an exam after the
group presentations. In this case, the presentations become a review experience prior to the test.

Use and Communicate Checkpoints

One value of teamwork is the mutual support that each person receives when tackling complex work and
building a comprehension base. Spaced through a unit, checkpoints are formative assessment
opportunities to track the growth of each student. The results are used to help those falling behind and to
challenge those who need appropriate complex work. This ensures that no student falls behind for more
than a day, and that no advanced learner stagnates due to lack of challenge. Break the major products

into chunks based on what concepts should be understood at a given level and timeframe. Use
assessments that anchor each section. Some quick assessments include:

Exit cards

Reflection journals

Checklist reflections

Non-graded quizzes

Make Work Collaborative, Not Group Tasks

Often there is "the" product that the team must craft. Even if everyone did their part, they would only
know their part. In collaborative work, each student develops a draft or prototype of the product, which is
turned in for individual assessment. The team's job is to take something from each person's work when
forming the group's final product for a public audience. Another benefit is that as students work on their
vision for the product, they can have collaborative conversations about the content and processes. Have
students produce reflective learning journals about their understanding, which will document their unique
perspective on the work, even when several students have similar ideas. Helpful tools include:

Graphic organizers

Thinking maps

Feedback and revision team conversations

Checklist-based team discussions

Group Work Has Value

Many schools strive to focus on preparing students for college and career opportunities after graduation.
Working in teams is integral to student development of these important skills found from such sources
as Tony Wagners work on survival skills and the P21 organization. There is broad consensus for such
skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, and self-management. Yet content
curriculum remains the emperor of instruction. Both curriculum and the benefits of teamwork can occur -provided that the academic assessments are individually based. Otherwise, the emperor is unclothed.
Turn student groans into grunts of effort by truly knowing where each student is in his or her mastery of
skills and concepts, while using authentic group experiences that ready students for their post-secondary
future.