What Does Quality Arts Education Assessment Look Like?

There are a number of qualities that should be present in arts education assessment. Dennie Palmer Wolf and Nancy Pistone, in their book Taking Full Measure: Rethinking Assessment Through the Arts, identified the following qualities for arts education assessment.

• An Insistence on Excellence
  Expectations for student work should be high and clearly communicated.
• Judgment
  Artwork should elicit a variety of responses.
• Importance of Self-Assessment
  Artists engage in self-assessment of their work. Student artists should also be actively engaged in this process.
• Multiple Forms of Assessment
  Using multiple forms of assessment captures nuances that are missed with only one approach. Each assessment tool provides a new piece of information and insight and broadens our understanding of students’ learning and work.
• Ongoing Assessment
  Assessment should be embedded into the learning process and ongoing throughout the school year (rather than occurring at only one point in the calendar). Student artists benefit greatly from the circular process of creation, analysis, and revision.  

Formative & Summative Assessment
Good assessment in any content area utilizes both formative and summative strategies. Formative strategies are used in process, allowing the teacher and student to chart progress and guide development. There are a variety of formative assessment tools available to teachers and students, including observation checklists, rubrics, and personal reflection prompts.

Summative strategies look at outcomes – did students learn or were they able to do what we set out to teach them? The Connecticut State Department of Education suggests that the following criteria should apply to summative assessment to ensure validity and usefulness. Summative arts assessment tasks should:

• Be challenging, meaningful, and related to the arts instruction.
• Require that students in the performing arts create, perform, and respond, and students in the visual arts should create and respond. Each of these tasks is part of the artistic process and students should successfully demonstrate each.  
• Provide students with clear examples of high-quality student work.
• Include critique, revision, and student self-assessment.

What is “Authentic Assessment?”
Assessment is authentic when it mirrors work done by real people in the real world. Traditional pencil-and-paper tests are not considered authentic, as real-life occupations typically use other forms of assessment. Arts education makes great use of authentic assessment when students are creating their own artworks. Grant Wiggins (1998) identified the following standards for authentic assessment:

1. The assessment task is much like one found in a real-world setting.
2. The assessment requires judgment and innovation. Students must create their own solutions to problems rather than using only formulas or established procedures.
3. The assessment asks students to “do” the subject. Rather than regurgitating facts, students must conduct the work of the content area. They must know and do.  
4. Students must use skills and knowledge to complete complex tasks. Authentic assessment requires students to integrate skill and knowledge – often from more than one content area – to solve problems and create solutions.
5. The assessment allows students to practice, get feedback, and revise performances and products. Authentic assessments utilize the circular loop of performance, feedback, and revision. Student work develops and evolves through this use of assessment.
    

The National Association for Music Education established guidelines for quality music assessment. One of their key guidelines is that arts assessment should be authentic. The National Art Education Association published Assessing Expressive Learning, which is a guide to authentic assessment in visual arts.

Assessment in Context

Edward Warburton (2002) encourages those using authentic assessment to not be limited to or focus solely on the final product or outcome. Warburton states that assessment in context includes not only genuine final products but it also includes activities that are true to the making of the art form. He points out that playing scales on a piano is not an authentic product but it is an authentic task in the musical training of pianists. So assessment in context includes both final products such as portfolios or performances as well as “traditional pedagogical activities” such as playing scales or warm-up exercises.