| Authentic Assessment
To accurately evaluate what a person has learned, an assessment method must examine collective abilities. It must present students with real-world challenges that require them to apply their relevant skills and knowledge.
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At CVIS we combine “Authentic Instruction” with “Authentic Assessment.” “Authentic Instruction” means teaching students to: produce knowledge for themselves, use inquiry to construct meaning, and to produce discourse, products, and performances that have value or meaning beyond success in school.
“Authentic Assessment” assesses students’ abilities to produce knowledge, construct meaning, and examines the quality of students’ work and performance. We use assessment to work closely with parents and students to create realistic goals that are relevant to students’ individual ability levels. Portfolios, conferences, self-assessment, goal-setting, peer critique and tests are all methods we use to meet our goal of “Authentic Assessment”. It should be noted that we do not believe testing and assessment are synonymous. Testing may be used as a portion of our assessments but it is unrealistic to assume that any test can accurately reflect or gauge all of a student’s skills. It is more realistic to look at all of a student’s work and actions to gauge their social maturity, various abilities, strengths and deficits. In other words we try to be as comprehensive as possible in our assessment.
Report Cards at CVIS are as comprehensive as our assessment philosophy. Subjects like Reading, Writing, and Mathematics are broken down into lists of skills necessary to accomplish a variety of tasks within that subject area. Students’ abilities in those task areas are then assessed based on students’ demonstrated abilities throughout the semester or school year.
Use the links below to learn more about Authentic Instruction/Assessment. Also note some of our assessment explanation above was drawn from the article on weac.org. Please refer to it for a more thorough examination of assessment theories and philosophies.
Fairtest