Authentic Assessment

Okay. So we are looking through all these articles about authentic assessment and I’m thinking all the time that the opposite of authentic is not traditional, but false. Could that be right? Are the assessments I give my students in the classroom false assessments? Early on, as my small group read an article entitled “What is Authentic Assessment,” I noticed an absence of the types of assessments I tend to use. As an English teacher, I avoid what they dubbed forced response tests, things like multiple choice, true false, and fill in the blank. True, I do use them from time to time for vocabulary assessments, but then that’s all I want to know from the kids. Do you know what this word means? Can you figure it out? However, for every two or three vocabulary multiple choice, fill in the blank tests, there is at least one journal assignment requiring my students to use the words, to show creativity as they combine words that would not occur naturally in nature. I mean, ophthalmologist and subterranean? An eye doctor for blind moles? Not bad. Not bad.

The problem with me and authentic assessments is that I feel so stupid. If I worked in a school system that had authentic in its name—Florence School of Authentic Education. We’d be the Florence Fleas. No reason, just like the sound of it. If the push of the entire school or even of the school system were toward authentic assessments, I would be totally on board. Obviously, since I applied to work there. But here . . . I’d be the only teacher doing a mock-courtroom trial alongside To Kill a Mockingbird. It’d be cool, sure. But somehow in my attempt to be authentic, I feel I would go too far into artificial. Doing something that’s authentic just because it’s authentic is no reason to be authentic.

I forgot to support one of the points I made in the first paragraph. What was missing from the definition of Authentic Assessment, at least from my article, was English work. Essays did not fall into the Traditional Assessments no-no list. So are we safe giving out essays? Long answer questions? I mean, that’s authentic enough. At many points in the future lives of our children, they will be required to write responses, explain what happened, give details about how and why they are the best fit for this job or that. That’s authentic, right?

You still have to think in a well-made multiple choice test. What if you made the kids justify their responses on a multiple choice test? Correct and incorrect? Does that then become authentic? I say yes.

December Capstone Festival

So, I’m sitting here looking at these kids and thinking about achievement. Well, to be honest I’m sitting at my computer a few weeks after the December Capstone Festival trying to remember what went on. Don’t worry. I took notes, being the achiever that I am.

There were two groups of kids, though for the life of me I could not tell the difference in quality or content. A few were part of the MINDS program. Mentoring Intellectual N-something Development of Students. One, Scout (and all I can think of is Atticus and Jem) wanted to create a new playground for her elementary school. I got to thinking, what’s so special about this? It’s just a playground. But, then, someone has to design it. Why not a seven-year-old kid. Is that achievement? Being that young and taking on the task of an adult? Maybe so. Her biggest problem was the limitations of the program. Google Sketch. Maybe so. The biggest thing holding me back from being able to paint masterpieces is my inability to figure out how to make the paint brushes work like I want them to.

What makes the video-game designer an achiever? What about the kid who wants to make a movie about Greek Mythology? She seemed like she just wanted to make a video with her friends in it. I liked the kid with the idea about an educational recycling video. That seems like a measurement of a high achiever. Recycling? What kid cares about that? Design a video game, a playground, a cool video with your friends, learn about strange monsters . . . that’s all kid stuff, to be sure. But recycling? That’s forward thinking on the part of a littl’un. Adults are supposed to think about the environment, not kids. A+ in my book.

Here are, however, my reservations from my original notes:
• Difficulty in determining giftedness in one so young.
• Some topics seem like a natural fascination bordering on obsession.
• Why are these kids considered gifted? They seem like regular kids (except the first one wanting to work in robotics) who’ve gotten a lot of time and resources and encouragement to explore “stuff they like.”
• Crypto-kid. Seems like he’s on a wild goose chase.

All this makes me glad I’m not the one responsible for determining whether or not these kids are gifted or not. My problem would be in turning them down. How could I say one of them is not gifted?

Mental Ability Assessment Response

Mental Ability. I’m full of it. I love these kinds of tests. We took the [please insert name here] non-verbal assessment of mental ability. Loved it. I love puzzles like this. Which shape comes next, which number follows in this sequence, if you fold this piece of paper this way and that way, what will it look like when you are finished? But, poor me, I had to leave early and could not find out what my test score was. I think I got them all right, but that’s just my arrogance coming through. But it’s not about me, is it? Nope. It’s about the kids. This kind of test makes you think. Makes your brain hurt. I have the stamina for it and I enjoy it, so I won’t complain or give up. Do it all day long, doesn’t bother me. But a lot of the students who come my way are put off by tests like this. Well, they are put off by problems that do not have immediate, clear answers. Put off by questions that require extended, multi-layered thinking.

Why is that?

Are they stupid? Who could not enjoy a test like this?

Okay. The ones who reject this type of non-verbal mental ability test probably lack a certain degree of spatial thinking. That, to me, is what most of this is about. Can you imagine a three-dimensional object taken from a two-dimensional piece of paper and rotate it in your head? Are you willing to spend time looking back and forth and back and forth among three our four different objects to figure out what the pattern is? How many permutations can you hold within your brain at the same time? I can see this angering some personalities.

We also looked at a few verbal assessments. Questions with words. Still, here we had number sequences, odd-man-out questions (which of these objects does not belong, like in the Sesame Street song). I like this type of assessment less, but will still dedicate myself to it . . . but here I go talking about myself again. Okay. The inclusion of words and concepts introduces an unmistakable bias to the testing procedure. The ideas and concepts familiar to a farming community are, possibly, entirely foreign to someone raised in Orlando, Florida amid the glitz and glamour of Universal Studios and Disneyworld!

Let’s go wordless. No bias . . . or maybe they don’t have shapes like that in Omaha.