If education reform is to succeed, it will be due in large part to the reform of assessment practices. The sites listed below reflect educators' efforts to assess deeper levels of understanding, higher levels of thinking, and student performance on more life-like tasks.
Most authentic assessment, as indicated by the links below, moves from measuring fact memory to measuring indicators of understanding and thinking skills. Thus reformed assessment is key to overcoming negative effects of Standardized Testing with its effect of influencing teaching toward lower level knowledge-without-context.
ASSESSMENT by SUBJECT AREA
English Language Arts
Rubrics! -- Great site to help you evaluate students most fairly and to help them learn to self-evaluate in all areas of English!
Dear English Teachers --Performance Assessment represents a change of thinking regarding the teaching-learning-assessment culture in the English classrooms. It requires teachers to re-examine their teaching and assessment practices.
Authentic Assessment -- 23 excellent articles from the Coalition for Essential Schools
Assessing What Matters -- Worthy assessments should reflect the broader capabilities that students need to thrive in the 21st century.
Seven Practices for Effective Learning -- Teachers in all content areas can use these seven assessment and grading practices to enhance learning and teaching.
What Does It Take to Graduate? What's in a test? -- Linda Darling-Hammond's article that asserts " almost nothing we do in the world of work requires recognizing one of several pre-selected responses to questions about a single fact or piece of information. Most jobs in today's knowledge- based economy require that we find, assemble and analyze information; write and speak clearly and persuasively; and work with others to solve messy problems that don't have predetermined answers.
LOOKING AT STUDENT WORK -- Fascinating sites reflecting recent efforts to take student work seriously as the focus for determining what needs to be done and improved in assessment.
EXAMPLES OF CLASSROOM BASED ASSESSMENT -- Alaska's adaptation of Kentucky's authentic evaluation techniques for both process and content in all subjects
LEADERSHIP RUBRIC -- Kentucky's tool for evaluating principals and other leaders
PARKER CHARTER SCHOOL [Click on "Curriculum & Assessment," and scroll down to your subject area. Click here for evaluation RUBRICS in your discipline.]
