Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessment is not just a test. In life after high school (and college for some), how many multiple choice tests does a person come across? What about true/false? None. Why do we test students knowledge this way then? When is a student going to be asked "Who was the 16th president of the United States?" in the real world? Now taking an analyzes of how the decisions of that president affected our country, that is something students can use in life.

Authentic assessment is testing the students on their skills, rather than just their knowledge. Theses assessments are more relevant than just a test to students.

Can authentic assessment be used in any subject area? My answer is yes. Every subject area has standards that promotes higher order thinking in students. Key words like "demonstrate", "create",  "evaluate", and "analyze" are actions that cannot be written on a multiple choice test.

Here are some examples of authentic assessments I have came up with for various subject areas:

• English: Have students write a letter in a form of a five paragraph essay on how they deserve something (a game, new puppy, award, etc.) This is authentic assessment, because they will have to evaluate themselves, analyzing their target audience, and create an argument for their purposes. This is real world application as well. I breed dogs, and if a potential puppy buyer cannot email me using proper grammar and sentence structure, or not be able to communicate with me in writing, I will not sell them a dog.

• History/Social Studies: Speaking to people not in education, most believe this subject area is useless. It angers me, because it is not just about the facts of history. It is what we do with those facts. In this subject area you can have students analyze the past, and see if it will happen in the future. Students can study what past presidents political platforms were, and compare them to the political platforms people are running for today. Students can ask questions in this subject area and make predictions on current events.

• Math: We do math everyday. We all spent money! Students can calculate spending, make charts of what they spend money on, and calculate interest. If that isn't relevant to students, I don't know what is.

Other subject areas like science, health, art, music, and the vocational areas all have "hands on" activities for students. Most of these activities have rubric for mastery.

I teach high school, I am used to teenagers when it comes to evaluating them. In high school and middle school, I believe these students can demonstrate mastery, based on my examples above. I struggle when it comes to the elementary level. I rarely ever work with these students, but I believe they can demonstrate mastery in subjects. We had a mini-economy in my elementary school. We were to create shops, pay "rent" for our booths, make something, and sell it to other students. We would then see if we made money, or lost money. I think examples like this show that authentic assessment works in the elementary grades as well.

The last question "Is it practical to ask teachers to complete these types of activities in the current, high stakes testing environment? YES! Why would we not? If a student can think critically, they can conquer those tests. If we have them analyze text already in class, or make calculations in real world settings, they can relay those skills on to a test. Most of the standardized tests are moving towards higher order thinking skills. If we expect those in our classes, they can apply them too the test.

Why should we teach students towards a test, when we should be teaching them towards the world they will be living in anyways?