Authentic Assessment in Action: Studies of Schools and Students at Work
| Author (s) |
Darling-Hammond, L., Ancess, J., & Falk, B. |
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| Year of Publication |
1995 |
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| Publication Type |
book |
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| Name of Periodical |
Authentic Assessment in Action: Studies of Schools and Students at Work |
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| Publisher &
Address |
Teachers College Press
1234 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10027
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| Available From |
Publisher |
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| URL |
http://tc-press.tc.columbia.edu/noframes.html |
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| Suggested Audience |
- Educators
- Policy makers
- Administrators
- Parents
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| Descriptors |
- Case studies
- High schools
- Performance based assessment
- Student assessment
- Student attitudes
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Content Abstract
This book examines how five schools in New York City have developed ”authentic,” performance-based assessments of students’ learning, and how this work has interacted with and influenced the teaching and learning experiences students encounter in school. Authentic assessment attempts to take the measure of a child’s real work over time and to embed that assessment in a powerful but familiar intellectual context comprehensible to the child. Case studies of two elementary and three secondary schools describe how the schools are using a number of different strategies for personalizing instruction, deepening students’ engagement with subject matter, and assessing learning in rigorous and holistic ways. The case studies examine how authentic assessment supports changes in curriculum, teaching, and school organization. The cases document the changes in student work and learning that can accompany new approaches to assessment when these are embedded in a school-wide effort to create learner-centered education. The specific aim of the book is to offer a ”school-eye-view” of authentic assessment and to capture the kinds of work students and schools engage in as they use teaching, learning, and assessment strategies that together support high levels of accomplishment on challenging ”real world” tasks. (Contains 97 references.) (JB) (ERIC Clearinghouse # SP036046)
Methodological Notes
Case studies of five secondary and elementary schools who developed and were using ”authentic,” performance-based assessments of students’ learning.
Additional Comments
”Assessment” thus has many functions. It is only as good as its instruments, and it is defensible only to the extent that it actively forwards and enhances a child’s learning.
It was in recognition of this view of assessment that a growing number of concerned school people have freshly defined their work. They have put at the center of their teaching the persistent answering of the student’s question ”how’m I doing?” and they labor to persuade that student to make a habit of asking it herself, always. They struggle to get the deepest possible assessment, a rich understanding of that youngster’s intellectual struggle, and they document her progress. They make the assessment as ”authentic” as possible, taking the measure of the child’s real work over time (not just the tokens of that work, the grades on a few hours of formal testing) and embedding that assessment, as the teaching before it, in powerful but familiar intellectual contexts which are comprehensible to the child.
Some schools have…reconnected learning, teaching, and assessment in powerful ways, ones which raise all sorts of central question about education. What are high standards? Who decides what they are? How can one tell them when one sees them? To what extent do we care how are students perform in life beyond the classroom and testing room?…It was five such schools that Linda Darling-Hammond and her colleagues have studied and which form the basis for this important book. The issue of assessment comes first, but we see in the following case studies how it becomes powerfully enveloped in the processes of learning and teaching, of informing students, teachers, parents, and others of ”how the children are doing.” The portraits explicitly and implicitly suggest a deep, fair, and defensible way to answer the question ”How’m I doing” in a manner that helps this child and eventually every child. (From foreword by Theodore Sizer)
Reviews and Commentary by the Field
