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ASSESSMENTS

Assessments are a natural part of the teaching and learning process, from the first stages of lesson planning, through students assessing their own learning, to documentation of student knowledge, skill, and mastery. But students may respond to artistic and creative challenges in many different ways that can’t simply be scored “right” or “wrong.” So how do we judge whether teaching in the arts is effective and students are learning?

Because the arts are a matter of individual expression, students’ artistic creations can and should be as different as the children making the art. But it is possible to make informed judgments about each student’s mastery of the art form he or she is being asked to learn, based on shared criteria that are well understood by students and teachers alike. Performance-based assessments in the arts ask students to demonstrate their level of knowledge and skill in the concepts of a particular arts discipline by creating, performing, and responding to a work in that discipline. As they progress, students and teachers continually assess the work and respond to the work of others, in an ongoing process of personal and peer critique and artistic development. With sufficiently clear criteria, even very young students have been able to engage in reflective peer critiques.

Effective performance assessments in the arts not only allow students to evaluate their own progress, but they are crucial to showing teachers how to modify their teaching strategies to get better results. Scoring rubrics, which specify the criteria for student performance at different levels of achievement, can help to clarify teaching objectives and promote clarity and consistency in evaluation.

How Do State-Level Performance Assessments Work?

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has developed 60 classroom-based performance assessments (CBPAs) in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts at the benchmark levels of grades 5, 8, and 10. These assessments help students and teachers assess learning in the arts through meaningful tasks that have transferable and “real-life” connections for students. Each CBPA includes directions for administering the assessment, scoring rubrics, and examples of student work; if needed, teachers can modify the assessment for individual students. OSPI assessments can be found at www.k12.wa.us/curriculumInstruct/Arts.

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