Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

home about the conference programme registration accommodation contact

Where Does Authentic Assessment Really Fit?

Dr. Carol Oberg, Associate Professor
University of La Verne
obergc@ulv.edu

Assessment is integral to the teaching profession.   Teachers have always assessed the progress of their students and students have received grades or credit for work completed and have matriculated, or not, depending on these results. Today, teachers of special needs learners are faced with new challenges of teaching to state standards and aligning student’s IEP goals with standards.   In addition, teachers struggle to meet the assessment demands of exit exams, district benchmarks, and high stakes assessments.   Teacher accountability, student achievement, and data collection are key phrases in today’s educational culture. Our educational system, driven by student outcomes, requires teachers to carefully consider what is taught, how to teach, and how to assess.

Assessment, therefore, is a major issue in both special education and general education. It is also quite complex. There are many reasons for using assessment measures in classrooms.   Assessments may be used for evaluative purposes after a lesson or unit of instruction, or used as a way to check for understanding during lessons.   They may be used to guide initial or ongoing instruction or evaluate an implemented program.   Assessments may be used to grade teacher proficiency, student competence or school performance. Assessments may also be used to evaluate a student’s final product, judge a student’s thinking and behavior process, or compare a student’s progress over time.   Some assessments are used to compare outcomes between different groups of learners, different instructional programs and curricula, and different instructors. Three specific purposes for classroom assessments are: to direct instruction and create learning objectives that are relevant and appropriate before instruction, to check for understanding during instruction, and to evaluate student competence and knowledge after instruction.  

Though there are multiple ways to assess students’ knowledge prior to instruction,  traditional paper-pencil assessments have been the preferred type of pre-testing used in special education. Special educators must “front load” their instructional decision making by testing first, creating goals and benchmarks and then determining the most appropriate instructional strategy to meet the goals. However, traditional paper-pencil assessments require students to produce an answer that is either selected from a menu of possibilities, such as multiple-choice, or matching, or to select whether a statement is true or false. The “forced choice” or selection response format allows students to identify possible answers, rather than produce or construct their own answers.   All accepted possibilities are presented and either by a process of elimination or by good guessing the student may choose the correct answer. In closure or short answer test formats, students receive a different challenge.   They must produce an appropriate word or phrase for a given statement or question.    Though there may be more latitude in acceptable answers to these types of questions, answers are still held to a narrow band of possibilities, with limited construction or application of knowledge. (Choate, 1995)

The benefits of these tests are that they are relatively easy to create, quick to administer and score and can be given to individual students, small groups or to whole classrooms. In addition, they are appealing to teachers already burdened by constraints of time, standards, and district benchmarks.   In addition, they give the teachers specific information as to the amount of memorized facts a student knows.

The difficulties with traditional assessments can be prohibitive for certain learners.   “The negative consequences of norm-referenced test use for students from non-dominant cultures and language groups are well-documented.” (Estrin, 2002, p. 2) Traditional tests require a level of ability with printed material that may be unrelated to the content, and may negatively impact a poor reader’s ability to demonstrate specific, content knowledge.   Students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds may not be able to “show all that they know” with traditional, paper-pencil assessments.   In addition, students who have little connection with and find artificial relevance to this type of assessment format, may perform poorly and be judged as having inadequate skills in a subject, when, in fact, they may have a great deal of background knowledge.   Guessing is another issue in relation to these types of assessments. Due to lack of motivation or skill, students may guess and provide random, quick-think answers, which may be correct or incorrect.   Teachers may have no way of knowing if correct answers were because the student knew the information or merely made “good guesses”.  

Traditional paper-pencil assessments can offer specific information regarding student’s concrete, factual knowledge   If teachers judge students’ abilities only by these traditional tests, however, they may be “data-deprived”  in making the most educated estimation of appropriate instructional strategies and creating curriculum goals.   In particular, in a classroom with learners who exhibit different learning needs, a variety of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and have different learning styles, traditional tests may offer limited useful information about a student’s current knowledge base, learning styles, ability to think critically and apply new knowledge to various situations, and the ability to work with peers. If teachers want more information, they will have to test in a different manner.

Teachers are challenged to “…find good assessments and learn how to use them”. (Rulon,   2002) Connecting assessmentto instruction, both prior to and post instruction, and utilizing alternative authenticassessment are critical to efficiently and effectively   determining student’s knowledge and skills before instruction to provide quality relevant instruction to students.   For Estrin the hope is that “alternative assessment will reveal what these [non-dominant language learners] truly know and can do.” (p.1)   In fact, alternative, authentic performance assessment may prove a powerful pre-instructional tool for all learners.

Authors and researchers continue to struggle with the definitions and delineations between authentic, alternative and performance assessment. “Performance-based assessment describes one or more approaches for measuring student progress, skills, and achievement…one way of looking at performance assessment is to think of it as the ultimate form of linking instruction with assessment.” (Cohen & Spenciner, (2003) p. 165)   To demonstrate their skills and knowledge, students may conduct interviews, create learning logs, develop posters, participate in debates, build a model, participate in group projects, complete experiments or demonstrate knowledge through the arts, dance, and music. Myriad of opportunities exist for demonstrating competence within performance-based assessment.

Authentic performance assessments, on the other hand, are tasks of “real-world” application of content knowledge, rather than contrived problems for the classroom setting.   “Authentic assessment is similar to performance assessment except that the student completes or demonstrates knowledge, skills or behavior in a real-life context and real-world standards measure the student’s knowledge, skills, or behavior.” (Cohen & Spenciner, 2003, p. 166)  Rulon (2002) states:

Although the terms “performance task” and “authentic assessments” have become somewhat interchangeable, they aren’t the same thing.   A performance task may not necessarily be “authentic”.   A task becomes authentic when there is a real-world application of content knowledge.

Estrin (2002), however, states “…alternative assessments such as student portfolios, performance tasks, and student exhibitions…[are] also called “authentic” or “performance” assessments…[and] have the common notion of a meaningful performance or product. For the purpose of this paper, authentic performance assessment will be combined as terms that can be used interchangeably.  (Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2002)

If assessment is to assist in leading instruction and curriculum, it must do so throughout the instructional process.   In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe explain how curriculum and instruction promote higher order learning and deep understanding through a systematic approach to curriculum development beginning with identifying the course objective and then developing appropriate assessment matched to the objective. With objective and assessment delineated, the teacher then determines the necessary skills needed for the course objective, and creates appropriate instructional strategies to develop those skills that lead to student success.   In this paradigm, assessment is an integral part of the curriculum and instructional practice as a way to guide instruction and test competence after instruction. The question is: can we “front-load” authentic assessment before instruction to develop a closer link to authentic and creative instruction?

To “front load” (pre-test) the curriculum with authentic assessments offers the teacher as well as the student a way of examining current skills and knowledge prior to instructional decision making, and presents a direct link to authentic instruction.   How best to do this within the confines of a school district is a significant dilemma.    One alternative method is to use performance assessments to test prior knowledge of content or skills.  This fits well with standards based instruction. A “primary purpose of standards-based classroom assessment is to inform teaching and improve learning… Classroom assessment is much more than tests, rubrics and giving grades.   Assessment is an integral part of instruction…effective classroom assessment   [is] …relevant to immediate learning.” (Carr and Harris, 2001, p.35).   Quality assessment of student’s learning is when a teacher “embeds a wide range of ongoing assessments in instructional activities to provide consistent guidance for planning and instruction.”   (Ellen Moir (2004, p. 13)   For all students, but in particular for special needs students, focused lessons, varied instructional strategies and different assessment practices linked to instruction can help students make connections and demonstrate their learning.   Instructional strategies and goals can be guided by classroom assessment results, from the beginning of the lesson until the lesson is completed and the students are tested for competence. Classroom instructors must do better than guess at students’ strengths to guide classroom motivation and classroom success.   Students can participate from the very beginning of instruction by demonstrating their strengths through authentic performance assessments.   Through the use of “pre-instruction” testing (pre-testing) with alternative assessment measures, students can demonstrate their abilities, strengths, knowledge, likes and desires that can guide classroom instruction that is relevant, meaningful and motivating.

             Within a classroom, how can teachers use performance assessments to guide instruction?    When studying the three branches of government, teachers may ask students to create a poster with specific content information describing the three branches, their history and purpose.   To apply knowledge of government, students may be given a problem scenario and asked to debate which branch of government might be responsible for solving the problem, why and how it might go about it. In math, to learn about students’ money skills, students may be asked to create a menu with prices, and then create three potential orders, total the sum of each order and calculate the amount of change needed.   In this way, the teacher will have a better idea of how the students understand the use of money, as well as addition and subtraction of money facts. Older students may be asked to review stock prices and given problems related to stocks increasing and decreasing in value, and making judgments to keep or sell stock based on previous stock history, current value of similar stocks, and appraisal by brokerage firms.   In studying literature, students may be asked to create a brochure describing writers of three different genres, delineating themes, character development, and plot construction specific to each genre.

            There are many different performance tasks that can be created to test prior knowledge and assist teachers in truly understanding what their instructional and curriculum tasks should be for a given group of students. Teachers are limited only by their own creativity.   In developing performance based assessments teacher should keep the following questions in mind:   1) What are the important aspects or characteristics of   this subject that students should know, 2) How can students demonstrate their knowledge in ways different from traditional assessment measures, 3) What are the criteria for demonstrating competence and what will mastery look like, and 4) How will feedback be provided to the students and how will the results of this assessment be used for curriculum/instructional purposes. (Elliott, 1995; O’Neil, 1996; Hall & Salmon, 2003)

            The disciplined use of rubrics formalizes the evaluation process of the performance assessment and provides fair and clear results to the students.   Teachers select specific components from each objective or lesson for students to demonstrate proficiency.   As teachers determine this they develop a clear picture of what type of work is considered exemplary, proficient, passing or needing more teaching.   Rubrics can  clarify and   be used to communicate expectations and assessment results and assist in linking assessment to instruction.   “Rubrics allow teachers to examine instruction and assessment in a matrix format.   The rubric should clearly delineate the teacher’s expectations for performance…” (Hall and Salmon, 2003, p. 8)

A rubric is a scoring guide that describes possible responses and delineates qualities and characteristics at varying levels of performance for a completed product.   Rubrics contain a semantic scale of categories or characteristics of behavior or output to be assessed, matched to a criterion or standard used for evaluation. Specific explanation (and examples) for each standard are given. The two basic types of rubrics are analytic and holistic. The analytic rubric is used to assess a product through a detailed description of various criteria, designating a score for each criterion.   A holistic rubric assesses a product on the basis of an overall impression or its overall effectiveness, also based on specific criteria.   Examples abounds in the literature of rubrics for many different subject areas. Whittaker, Salend, and Duhaney (2001), for example, created a rubric for web site development that contained four levels or performance: 1) beginning, 2) developing, 3) accomplished, or 4) exemplary, and three categories:   1)content,  2) design and, 3) literacy skills. The rubric matrix provides detailed explanations for each of the four levels of performance that would equate to a 1,2, 3 or 4 within the categories of content, design, and literacy skills.  Stanford and Reeves (2005) created a rubric for creative writing using a Likert-type scale of 0-3 to quantify results of five characteristics of writing: meaning, editing, organization, creativity, and spelling and punctuation.   Hall and Salmon(2003) designed a 4 point Likert-type scale for a chocolate chip cookie rubric with   5 areas to test: texture, appearance, taste, content, and smell. These are but three examples of the use of rubrics to score different performance assessments. Rubrics provide students with the clear expectations, criteria, and attributes that they will be evaluated on, and once student work has been evaluated...”the rubric can provide a starting point for additional instruction.” (O’Neil, p.2, 1996)

            When teachers are informed about their students’ abilities, talents and interests, they are better prepared to make appropriate instructional and curriculum decisions to guide classroom instruction.   Traditional paper-pencil tasks, requiring a forced choice, one-right answer response, is one way to gain knowledge about students’ abilities and knowledge of a subject area.  But it is limited information that has numerous inherent problems, especially for the special needs student who may be struggling with printed material and low motivation. Teachers may be “data-deprived” as they plan their instruction.   Judgments based on scant information of students’ knowledge may over or under estimate students’ abilities and provide ineffective instructional strategies leading to limited learning. Teachers should employ performance (authentic) assessments to pre-test their students and enrich their understanding of their students’ skills, abilities and talents in order to provide all their students with rigorous, meaningful and motivating instruction.

References

Carr, Judy F & Harris Douglas E. (2001).   Succeeding with Standards Linking Curriculum, Assessment, and Action Planning.   Alexandria, Virginia:   Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Chappuis, Stephen & Stiggins, Richard J.,(2002). Classroom Assessment for Learning.   Educational Leadership.

Choate, Joyce S.,   Enright, Brian E., Miller, Lamoine J., Poteet, James A., &Rakes, Thomas A. (1995). Curriculum- Based Assessment and Programming (3 rd edition). Boston, MA:   Allyn and Bacon.

Cohen, Libby G. & Spenciner, Loraine J. (2003). Assessment of Children and Youth with Special Needs (2 nd edition).Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Elliott, Stephen N., (1995), http://ericec.org

Estrin, Elise Trumbull, (2002), Alternative Assessment:   Issues in Language, Culture, and Equity, http://www.enc.org.

Gregory, Karie & Frentzel, Roben, (2003). Good Tests Can Lead to Better Classroom Assessment.   Classroom Leadership.

Hall, Elizabeth Wikfors & Salmon, Susan J., (2003). Chocolate Chip Cookies and Rubrics, Helping Students Understand Rubrics in Inclusive Settings. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 35 (4), 8-11.

O’Neil, John (1996).   Teaching for Performance, New Assessments Help Reshape Classroom Practice.   Education Update. 38 (8).

Pierangelo, Roger & Giuliani, George (2002). Assessment in Special Education, A Practical Approach. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Rudner, Lawrence M. & Boston, Carol, (1994), ERIC Review, 3 (1), 1-11.

Stanford, Pokey & Reeves, Stacy, (2005).   Assessment That Drives Instruction. TEACHING Exceptional Children. 37 (4) 18-22.

Rulon, Michael (2002).   Authenticity: The Key to Standards-Based Assessment. Classroom Leadership.

Whittaker, Catharine R.,   Salend, Spencer J., & Duhaney, Devon, (2001).   Creating Instructional Rubrics for Inclusive Classrooms. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 34 (2) 8-13.

Wiggins, Grant & McTighe, Jay,   (1998) Understanding by Design.   Alexandria, Virginia:   Association for   Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Willis, Scott (1997). Using Assessment to Motivate Students.  Education Update. 39 (8).

home . about the conference . programme . registration . accommodation . contact