Authentic Assessment in Action

Book excerpt: This book examines, through case studies of elementary and secondary schools, how five schools have developed “authentic,” performance-based assessments of students’ learning, and how this work has interacted with and influenced the teaching and learning experiences students encounter in school. This important and timely book reveals the changing dynamics of classroom life as it moves from more traditional pedagogy to one that asks students to master intellectual and practical skills that are eminently transferable to “real-life” social settings and workplaces. “The issue of assessment comes first, but we see in the following case studies how it becomes powerfully enveloped in the processes of learning and teaching, of informing students, teachers, parents, and others of ‘how the children are doing.’ The portraits explicitly and implicitly suggest a deep, fair, and defensible way to answer the question ‘How’m I doing?’ in a manner that helps this child and eventually every child.” —From the Foreword by Theodore R. Sizer “Informative and thought provoking.” —American Journal of Education