Running Head: Authentic Assessment Essay

Authentic Assessment Essay

Jessica Branstetter
Teacher College of San Joaquin

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT ESSAY

When planning instruction all good teachers will also plan for assessment, but sometimes
we lose sight of what and why we are assessing. In order to be effective, we should make sure
our assessments are authentic. To be authentic, assessments need to be connected to classroom
instruction and ideally they can be something the students can learn from. Adams (1996) defines
authentic assessment as genuine, real, reliable, true and precise examinations that have value
f(add the page number where this quote was found). Authentic formative assessment should
always drive instruction and inform teachers on how to move forward in any given lesson
(Trauth-Nare & Buck, 2011). Authentic summative assessments should inform teachers on
student understanding and not just recall of memorized information.
The article Working Inside the Black Box (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam,
2004) gives multiple options for authentic formative assessment. Research shows, according to
Black et al. (2004), that when teachers ask questions of students they generally have a wait time
of less than a second before asking another question or giving the answer themselves. This
questioning technique is only effective with answers requiring memorization and superficial
thought (Black et al., 2004). Planning for meaningful questions and providing longer wait time
will raise expectations and challenge students to think deeper.
Black et al. (2004) as well as Trauth-Nare and Buck (2011) state that students should
have a clear understanding of what they will be assessed on and be given timely feedback on
their work. When given grades students are pitted against each other and will compare
themselves to their classmates; when given feedback in the form of comments, students are more
likely to focus on improving their work (Black et al., 2004). For this reason, it is a much more
valuable experience to give students feedback so the assessment is a valuable experience. One
formative assessment that has a great impact, according to Adams (1996), is the use of

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT ESSAY

journaling. Ongoing journaling can help teachers to see students writing and communication
skills while also informing instruction based on student understanding (Adams, 1996).
Black et al., (2004) discuss using summative assessments as formative assessments.
Students can examine their summative assessment using a traffic light system where they
highlight in green where their understanding is strong, and in yellow or red where they need to
focus their efforts moving forward (Black et al., 2004). In this way, students are learning to be
critical about the quality of their work. The goal being that this will help students focus on their
learning instead of focusing and how to move forward, and not focusing on a grade.
Overall, we need to make sure that our assessments are meaningful and directly related to
our instruction. Students should be challenged and given timely feedback in order to promote
future learning. We should make sure that we think about what students are learning and what we
are assessing, how we are using the information from the assessment, and in the end ask
ourselves what we can change to make assessments more meaningful in the future (Adams,
1996).

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT ESSAY

4
References:

Adams, T. L. (1996). Modeling authentic assessment for preservice elementary school teachers.
Teacher Educator, 3275-84. doi:10.1080/08878739609555134
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working inside the black
box: assessment for learning in the classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(1), 8-21.
Trauth-Nare, A., & Buck, G. (2011). Assessment for learning: using formative assessment in
problem- and project-based learning. Science Teacher, 78(1), 34-39.