Unfortunately, 21st century assessment of student learning in public schools has often become a political issue tied to district funding, teacher evaluation, and a host other variables seemingly tangential if not completely removed from actual student learning. While these considerations present real consequences for everyone involved in education, teachers must maintain their focus on students and their learning even as they advocate for change in systems that facilitate unfairness and inequity in practice.
Assessment completes the circle of learning. It provides teachers with information that indicates whether students have successfully learned the material at hand through completion of the objective. Confirmation of learning through assessment allows teachers to move forward with the next step or topic in a long-term sequence. Conversely, an inability to meet an objective requires re-vamped planning, remediation, and re-assessment. In this way, the purpose of assessment is to improve student learning.
Good music teachers have always made effective use of good assessment practices, yet others no doubt continue to make judgments regarding student learning on consistent attendance, concert participation, the presence of an instrument in class, and other tangential behaviors. While these certainly have value in that they can support or create opportunities for learning, they do not provide any actual indication of actual student growth.
Musical objectives require assessments that indicate musical learning. In addition, good assessment practices identify student learning that may largely be attributed to classroom interactions. Further, inconsistent or single assessments do not represent good practice. One-off tests, even if they are well-crafted tests, at the end of a defined unit do not provide evidence of learning. How do we know students learned anything? Perhaps they started the unit already able to complete all of the objectives. Teachers need to have evidence of where students begin, where they end, and how they achieved what they achieved along the way. A pre-test/post-test approach (as one example) can provide evidence of what instruction contributed to learning. Likewise, frequent, smaller assessments that generate tangible data provide a trail of growth and support a teacher’s role in learning as well. Whatever approaches a teacher chooses need to generate data over time that reflect student progress.
Informal observation and assessment have an important place in music education, but it is no longer enough to present these observations as evidence of learning without having concrete data. Anecdotally, teachers of course understand that students make progress over time. They observe their progression from sight-reading to concert performance in ensemble classes. They see their comfort levels increase with improvisation, composition, and theory over time. Unlike many teachers, instrumental teachers see students weekly, if not daily, for several years. They know whether students improve or not and as a result sometimes perceive more rigorous assessment practices as yet another layer of bean counting. But more information can only benefit both students and teachers. Individualizing instruction presents a challenge in any class, much less an instrumental class two times the size or more of an English, math, or science course. Generating concrete evidence of learning does not need to be onerous. The form of assessment can comprise anything from a five-second check during class to playing tests graded with rubrics to written tests on content knowledge. As long as the assessments appropriately match objectives, the possibilities are wide open.