Authentic Assessment

Assessment is the on going, often subtle process whereby teachers or parents keep track of children’s progress as they develop. It’s a natural and vital part of the teaching cycle, providing feedback to the teacher. Teaching requires continual adjustment. Assessing children’s awareness, skill level, and interest is a sound way to begin and end a course of study, and it fuels a teacher’s creativity and focus as the study unfolds. Assessment lets a teacher know how well she’s matched her lesson to the children she’s teaching. It’s a way for her to learn about individual knowledge and skills as children work cooperatively and independently. And it provides her with ideas about how to shape and pace her teaching.

Authentic assessment is an alliterative phrase coined to focus our awareness on the quality of the information we gather from students. The adjective, “authentic,” compels us to explore children’s abilities, style, and interests in a variety of situations, over time, after they’ve worked together and alone, by looking at beginning-, middle-, and end-products, using various means to communicate. The authenticity of an assessment resides in its legitimacy. Does it give a clear picture of what this student can do and under what circumstances?

Authentic assessment, then, is never a one-time event. By this definition, a final test, if it were the only assessment of the unit, would be inadequate to describe the range of behavior that’s worth knowing about. This is not to say that final tests are not legitimate! First, it would depend on how the tests were constructed. Do they give students an adequate opportunity to communicate what they’ve learned? Do they evaluate knowledge that’s worth knowing? Are they part of a collection of assessment strategies? Were students assessed throughout the unit on their ability to work in groups, on the quality of their oral presentations, on their ability to communicate good questions in their journals, on the merit of their research, on the insights shown in their self-assessments? Authentic assessment implies that behavior is best understood over time and in more than one way.

Authentic assessment can be subtle. What distinguishes “regular” class work from an assessment? With all this assessing going on, when does the work get done, the projects built, the plays written and performed? From the child’s point of view, there is often no differentiation between an activity that is being assessed and one that is not. This is deliberate, for teachers learn how a child operates in “real life” without the constraints of time and anxiety. The on going nature of assessment give it legitimacy. The teacher’s awareness and record keeping converts regular class work into an opportunity for assessment. Every piece of writing, every conversation, every question asked is a window into a child’s ability to function. It is when teachers notice and chronicle the work that it becomes assessment.

There are many ways to assess children’s progress in mathematics. Open-ended questions provide rich and meaningful data about the child’s thinking and ability to communicate that thinking in writing and drawing. Observations provide the teacher with information about a child’s pacing, style, and developing skill. Portfolios provide a method for teachers and students to gather information and reflect on the progress and new goals. Math journals offer a vehicle for students and teachers to realize what they still wonder about, what they are enthusiastic about, and what they really know. Individual tests provide feedback on how well children can function alone. Projects suggest the level and direction of student interest and engagement.

An Example:
A three-week investigation of squares, rectangles, and triangles with first graders, focuses on the kinds of definitions children develop to differentiate among these shapes. In past exercises, the children were tested by being asked to draw one of each of the shapes, or even to write the definition that had previously been provided. But this time, the focus is on how children construct these definitions.
In a “mystery bag” activity, one child puts a cardboard cut out into a cloth bag and another child tries to identify it by feeling it through the cloth. The teacher decides that during this activity children’s evolving definitions can be assessed through careful observations. The teacher includes in the verbal instructions to the class, “When you’re the guesser, tell what shape it is and how you know that it’s that shape.” As children play the game together, the teacher circulates through the room with a clipboard, systematically noting the level of definitions children are giving as they identify the mystery shapes. She has designed a checklist in advance to note particular qualities of the definitions. First, does the shape identification take a long time? Is it accurate? If so, does the definition take a long time to formulate? What vocabulary words do the child spontaneously use when telling how they know what it is?

Authentic assessment takes time, careful planning, and a crystal clear vision of both process and product-oriented goals. It is a rewarding practice, one that enriches the quality and depth of what students learn. For teachers, practicing authentic assessment is an intellectually challenging, rewarding experience.

About the Author

Christina Wright, Ph.D., is a math consultant living in Seattle, Washington. She is an adjunct faculty member at Pacific Oaks College Northwest and a frequent facilitator for the online-line Bank Street Forum.