  
What
is Authentic Assessment?
“Assessment is authentic,”
says Grant Wiggins, researcher and consultant,
“when we directly examine student performance
on worthy intellectual tasks. Traditional assessment,
by contrast, 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.”
According to Wiggins, authentic
assessment has the following characteristics.
- Authentic
assessments require students to be effective
performers with acquired knowledge.
- 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, analyzing political events, collaborating
on a debate, etc.
- Authentic
assessments attend to whether the student can
craft polished, thorough and justifiable answers,
performances or products.
- Authentic
assessment achieves validity and reliability
by emphasizing and standardizing the appropriate
criteria for scoring the varied products.
- “Test
validity” criteria are met by virtue of
the authentic assessment simulation of real-world
“tests” of ability.
- Authentic
tasks involve “ill-structured” challenges
and roles that help students rehearse for the
complex ambiguities of the “game”
of adult and professional life.
“A move toward more authentic
tasks and outcomes thus improves teaching and
learning”, says Grant Wiggins. “Students
have greater clarity about their obligations (and
are asked to master more engaging tasks) and teachers
can obtain results that 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.”
More
information.
Authentic
assessment can also be called “performance-based
assessment.” It evaluates not only what
students know, but what they can do with their
knowledge. High quality project-based learning
and community- and work-based learning inherently
include performance-based assessment. In both
the Amador Valley High School and the Irvington
High School Senior Projects, cited under examples
in the school-based learning section, students
are required to present their work publicly and
community members participate in the assessment
process. In worksite settings, students receive
continual feedback and culminating “performance-based
assessments” from their worksite supervisors.
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