Criteria and or Standards for Performance Assessment

¶ … Authentic Assessment, Grant Wiggins makes the case that authentic assessment is superior to traditional assessment in an educational setting. The article, published in the ERIC Digest, describes some differences between authentic and traditional assessment. Further, Wiggins notes that authentic assessment is often seen as time-consuming and expensive, and there may be problems with the public's acceptance that authentic assessment can be objective and reliable. Overall, begins fails to effectively address these issues.

To Wiggins, authentic assessment occurs "when we directly examine student performance on worthy intellectual tasks." This can include measurement off problem-solving and problem posting skills in mathematics, or the ability to listen to speak or facilitate the discussion. Authentic assessment require students to access all of the information and challenges found within the instructional environment, and can include conducting research, revision, writing, discussion, oral analysis, or collaboration. In an authentic assessment environment, students are faced with what are often the complex realities of professional or adult life.

Traditional assessment, according to Wiggins, is dependent upon inferences or substitutes "from which we think valid inferences can be made about the student's performance at those valued challenges." Traditional assessment occurs in most traditional tests that require students to simply recall information learned out of context. Often, these conventional tests are limited to a single answer questions done on paper, or multiple-choice. These traditional assessment tests are often arbitrary, static, and overly simplistic. Wiggins notes that authentic assessment is often seen as expensive and time-consuming.

Specifically, he notes that scoring judgment-based tasks costs about two dollars per student, while multiple-choice tests costs about one cent. However, he notes that the potential upside from authentic assessment is significant. This includes significant "gains to teacher professional development, local assessing, and student learning." The potentially prohibitive costs out of authentic assessment, Notes Wiggins, could be reduced by using a sampling strategy. Here, a small samples of students, a small number of student papers, or a sample per student.

Personally, I feel that Wiggins does little to effectively address the problems of excessive expense and time seen with authentic assessment. Today, school boards continue to struggle with what are often insufficient funds. In this context, it can often be difficult to provide the basics of teaching such as adequate materials and teacher resources. Wiggins' failure to provide a real solution to the problems of expense and time seem to effectively delegate authentic assessment to the back burner.

In the simplest terms, while authentic assessment may be a much superior form of assessment, it will not be incorporated if it cannot be afforded. Wiggins also notes that there may be concerns with the objectivity and reliability of authentic assessment, given that such assessment depends on often subjective scoring. To address this, he notes that a number of authentic assessment testing programs have operated "with a high degree of credibility and integrity" for a number of years.

Further, he notes that standardized tests can also be subjective in the items chosen, or how scores are established. He ends with the comment, "to improve student performance we must recognize that essential intellectual abilities are falling through the cracks of conventional testing." In this discussion of the public perception of authentic assessment, he does little to convince me that the public will ask that that the subjective scoring is both objective and reliable.

Instead, he discusses existing assessment programs that are successful, but fails to relate piece to public perception. Overall, Wiggins' article seems to be focused at individuals who.