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What is Assessment in
the Arts?
by Dr. Richard Siegesmund,
University of Georgia
An assessment is a tool that provides
evidence of what a child has learned. Assessment is also
the process through which such tools are developed, applied,
and the data generated evaluated. Our
most common form of assessment is the multiple-choice tests administered
to all children throughout California each spring. These
tests provide a portrait of what every child knows in language
arts and math. Increasingly, these tests are not simply
evaluative but judgmental: a child must reach a pre-determined
minimal score to advance to a higher grade. Our
use of assessment data to make judgments does not end there. Additionally,
individual assessment scores provide a portrait of every classroom,
every school, and every school district. Teachers from
poor performing classrooms can be fired, as can principals from
poor performing schools. Property values within entire
school districts can rise and fall. These tests truly
are high-stakes in every sense of the term.
Because these tests are so daunting for everyone involved, it
is easy to believe that this is the only way that we can assess
student performance. Because we are so skillful at assessing
language and math skills, it is easy to believe that these are
the only skills worth assessing. The tests are also attractive
because in some ways they promise an American vision of education:
a level playing field where each student can succeed solely on
his or her own individual intellectual merits. Supposedly,
the tests are objective: there is no subjectivity or playing
favorites. The best person ought to win.
Without assessment, schools have no way to determine how far
a child has come, articulate in clear terms the thinking skills
the child has mastered, or communicate to both students and parents
the new skills that the child should obtain. For teachers
in language arts and math, existing assessments provide a clear
view of the course to be covered (i.e. the curriculum)
each year. However, for areas outside of these standard
assessments--most notably science and the arts--there are no ready-made
assessments and thus no clear ready-made visions of curriculum.
In the past, many people saw the absence of curriculum and assessment
as an advantage. Teachers were free to construct their
teaching to the interests of the children in the classroom. Teachers
could take their cues from the local environment and local resources. Science
and the arts were free from one-size-fits-all conceptions of
instruction.
However as the high stakes of education have increased, parents
and politicians have increasingly called for schools to be accountable
for learning. Accountability demands that schools provide
evidence of valid student assessment. There is too much
at risk. The time of instruction in schools is too limited. Every
subject, every instructional period, has to show how it contributes
to core learning.
This creates a new challenge in the arts. If arts educators
claim that learning in the arts cannot be measured and should
be exempt from assessment, time for the arts is likely to be
cut from the school day. If arts educators make facile
claims that the arts will raise language arts and math assessment
scores, then deep learning in the arts can be quickly sacrificed
for short-term utilitarian goals.
How can deep personal learning be maintained while meeting the
new expectations for assessment? As one response to this challenge,
over the past ten years the State of California developed the
Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards and the Visual and
Performing Arts Framework in an effort to codify curriculum and
assessment in the arts. During this same time, the Performing
Arts Workshop, on its own, has taken the initiative to develop
assessment tools that are authentic to its curriculum developed
over nearly forty years of classroom practice.
Briefly, the Workshop's assessment articulates a progression
of thinking while a student engages in and reflects on performance. This
model incorporates the Workshop's curriculum as articulated in On
Stage in the Classroom , written by the Workshop's founder
Gloria Unti, and filtered through the cognitive theories of Elliot
Eisner, Professor of Art and Education at Stanford University. During
any Workshop lesson, students respond to a given problem, brainstorm
multiple solutions, justify a selection, and then revise and
expand on their first response. Through this process,
students demonstrate their ability to think critically outside
of language with their bodies and convert their pre-linguistic
knowledge into words. The translation of somatic knowing
into language improves a student's ability to reflect on cause
and effect, narrative flow, and coherent expression. While
this experience is particularly powerful for students who struggle
with language skills, the Workshop's curriculum can benefit all
students from pre-kindergarten to high school.
The Workshop's model for assessment does not mirror the California
Visual and Performing Arts Standards or Frameworks. However,
as both assessment models are deeply authentic to the experience
of learning in the arts, they share many similarities. The
Workshop's alternative assessment model has attracted state and
national attention. Between 2001 and 2003, an Arts Demonstration
Grant from the California Arts Council permitted valuable pilot
testing of the assessment. Currently, the assessment model
is an important component in the Workshop's United States Department
of Education, Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination
Grant.
Assessment promises the possibility of objectively measuring
a child's best thinking. Performing Arts Workshop's efforts
in assessment show that thinking is not limited to linguistic
and mathematical manipulation. All children think--and
some children think best--through the expressive use of their
bodies. The Workshop's assessment model quantitatively
demonstrates how this occurs.
Dr. Richard Siegesmund is an Assistant Professor of Art
Education at the University of Georgia. While completing his
doctorate at Stanford University in the early 90’s, Dr.
Siegesmund began to study the Workshop’s programs. For
ten years he has served as the Workshop’s evaluator and
content specialist.
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