Authentic Assessment

"The root of the word evaluation is value, and authentic assessment includes understanding FIRST (emphasis added) what students VALUE and then building from there."

Ayers's definition of assessment is totally upside-down from the mainstream view of assessment and I love it. Much of assessment is dictated by what society values or what school superintendents value. Very little seems to consider what students value first. Within classrooms that may not be true, but most standardized testing and the like is not about what students value. No wonder school is such a dull, drab, boring place for most children. Ayers definition of assessment is a throwback to Dewey's ideas on education. It's an interesting coincidence they they are/were both faculty at University of Chicago. And Paley's book also was written about an experimental school at University of Chicago. I wonder what Chicago's public schools look like with such progressive minds filling the teacher education halls.

I completely agree with Ayers that standardized tests are given way more power than they deserve and they suck even resisting people into their maelstrom. Ayers depictions of both himself and another anti-testing colleague's reactions to standardized test scores were revealing. Especially his colleague that went through hell and high water to get his daughter's test scores up; not because he did not consider his daughter intelligent but rather because "Those scores are like a union card. The union may be crooked and run by gangsters, but, hey, no union card, no work."

What a sad position for children of today to be in. Their whole future sometimes hinges on those test scores. But at the same time, in the working world, if you are only good at taking tests and cannot function within a group or if you lack people skills, then you are less likely to "get promoted." However, in some industries, the smartest people according to test scores but the dumbest when it comes to people and social skills are the managers. My roommate works at Microsoft, a company that seeks the best minds in the world to be employees. She is continuously frustrated by many of her managers because they do not have people skills. They may be smart, but they are a pain to work with and make for pretty poor managers.

Ayers explosion of the myth of scientific objectivity of test scores was revealing, especially how the averages are determined. The cultural bias and simplified way of determing averages make people aware before the test even begins of who will be the winners and who will be the losers. I wonder if teachers really do know before the test is administered? Ayers is just one education professional; he can't speak for all educators, though he's got a lot of good ideas and insights.

Ayers argument that the problem of drill and skill curriculum prevailing over a more comprehensive, problem-solving, critical thinking curriculum in our test-loving world is worse for those children who have the deck stacked against them just by their birth is strong. "By focusing on the ability to answer multiple-choice questions, reading is reduced to a set of relatively unimportant skills, and the link between reading and power is further broken." This broken link is the greatest loss of all, in my opinion.

I like Ayers's ideas about being frank with students about what the tests mean. Would such honesty, such bluntness about the lack of any real value in standardized testing be permitted to occur? Many people wish to shelter children in schools from harsh realities of the world and I think this is OK to a point, but I think it is crucial for children to know they exist and that there are tough obstacles to face as humans. Children should know the real value in standardized testing, but I foresee a lot of resistance from parents and curriculum writers if teachers pursued this strategy. Really, what you must do to do well on a standardized test is learn to take the test, but that should not be the goal of all learning in schools. Knowledge of the content of the test is much less significant to achieving high test scores than are the tricks to taking the test well.