Authentic Assessment in Instructional Leadership

Introduction

As Education moves into the 21st century educators have begun to question how students are assessed. When students are being assessed are they really getting a true picture of what was learned by the student? Authentic assessment takes a different approach; in essence the curriculum is built around the assessment. I other words you will be teaching to the test and students are given a real world application as assessment. The following review gives us insight as to the reasoning behind authentic assessments and how to develop them.

Literature Review

According to Jon Mueller, Professor of Psychology at North Central College, in his article “What is Authentic Assessment” assessment is what should drive the curriculum. Meaning that when teachers are using authentic assessment they should first decide the tasks that students will need to perform to demonstrate their competence and then the curriculum is developed to empower students to perform those tasks with ease, this would include the achievement of essential knowledge and skills. This has been referred to as planning backwards. He uses an example of someone taking a class in golf and then evaluating their performance by giving them a multiple choice test. That would not make sense; this theory would put them out on the golf course and ask them to simply play golf. Even though this is apparent with athletic skills, it is also true for academic subjects. We should teach students how to do math, history and science, not just know them. Then, we assess what the students have learned; we have students perform tasks that duplicate the tasks. When using authentic assessment teachers are encouraged to teach to the test. Students will need to learn how to perform wel...

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... They created a rubric of performance indicators, and time lines to track the progress of each group as they constructed their model cell (Moore, 1998).

The evidence that authentic assessment is a better way to measure how much a student learns seems to be strong. Educators need to take this to heart; it is only fair to the students to be assured that they are learning skills for life.

Works Cited

Moore, R. (1998, May-June). Helping Teachers Define and Develop Authentic Assessment and Evaluation Practices. Assessment Update .

Mueller, J. (2011). What is Authentic Assessment? Retrieved Sepetember 23, 2011, from Authentic Assessment Tool Box: http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm

Wiggins, G. (1996/1997, December/January). Practicing What We Preach in Designing Authentic Assessments . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, pp. 18-25.