Oct 14, 2010

Bubble-licious

I admit it. I am a bit shamed. We have a bubble test (fill in the blank, A, B, C test in art). Remember filling in bubbles? The pressure? The agony? Well, I get to administer those types of tests in my classroom. Because I like data, I am happy to have these numbers to show student growth… but there are issues. First, let me fill you in.

Each Course or Grade in our K-12 Art program administers a pre and post test at the beginning and end of each school year, semester or 7 week period of study. These are graded by a machine and use an A, B, C answer structure. This is the only assessment we have. All students and courses must complete the Pre and Post Test. I could bore you with an example. Ok, I will…. because these tests really are not THAT bad, they just don’t measure everything we are teaching…

This is our 2nd grade pre/post test – Click below to view

2nd Grade Test

According to Beattie (Assessment in Art Education by Donna K Beattie, Davis Publications, p. 7) assessment is used to gain information from one of three broad categories.

-Student Learning Outcomes

-Teacher Effectiveness

-Program Effectiveness

Our one assessment is trying to accomplish all of these things! It’s not working!

The information on our pre and post tests revolve around vocabulary, information recall and procedural knowledge.

This is important information to have about what our students know…. BUT.. According to the research shown next, it is a mere 1/6 of what arts are really teaching and should be assessing and reporting out on to gain a true picture of student growth.

Arts Assessment Should Show….

1.Knowledge of the content

2.Knowledge of skills and process integral to the discipline

3.Knowledge concerning why certain processes are used

4.Knowledge concerning metacognative skills for self reflection

5.Knowledge concerning motor skills and manipulation of tools

6.Knowledge about attitudes, interests and personal states of mind.

We are ready to make a huge change. I met with the administrators and told them some of the facts I have told you and we have FREE RANGE, a go ahead to dream and come up with any assessment plan we want, as long as we can show student growth.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO? What program wide assessment do you think would better represent what our students are truly learning? Does your district have a system assessment plan you use? Do tell!

http://teachingpalette.com Theresa

While my district does not require art assessment tests, we certainly do it at our classroom level. A great way to measure growth is by using digital media. First, this levels the playing field for kids who may have issues manipulating traditional art materials. Second, since your goal is to measure progress, using digital art is a mess free way to gauge student concept understanding.
For example, if you were to teach about linear perspective, the students can start creating digital art with the teacher instructions in class one (lets say a road heading toward the horizon line). Digital copies can be saved from the progress during class one and THEN with additional direction, the children can fix or add more perspective elements during the second class. This can be repeated for each class, creating a learning benchmark each time. What this technique can help show is the degree of student progress from one class to the next with additional teacher instruction. What I love about digital media is that it is easy to “erase” mistakes so that the final outcome looks just as good as if they did it perfect from the beginning.
I certainly don’t think that all assessments should be done on the computer (art education is more than that) but it is one option.
- http://theartofeducation.wordpress.com Jessica Balsley
  
  Great ideas, Theresa. Thanks for stopping by the blog! I also have thought of using the “clicker” system that goes with Power Point to give quick assessments to see where my students are at. I love how you use technology to enhance learning!
maria

I am going to throw this out and as food for thought as we discuss all aspects of assessment: How accurate are our assessments–any kind of assessment–if we as elementary art teachers, only see a class once a week for 45 or so minutes? Does this or should this impact the fairness of what we think those particular students know after a lesson has been completed? Would we expect these same children to take standardized tests on subjects they only study once a week for 45 minutes? I do range of assessments and sometimes stand back and wonder if they know it because it is “fresh” right after the activity? Will they know the same information 2 months afterwards? This year is the first year my 5th graders are doing short multiple choice quizzes after the completion of a project. Though they are doing well…I have to wonder if they will retain this information months from now. But then I have to wonder if they retain all that science and social studies stuff as well..something to think about.
- http://theartofeducation.wordpress.com Jessica Balsley
  
  Great conversation starter! I agree. It’s hard to measure when you see them such a short amount of time. That is why we did pre and post. They are the most basic concepts they should know about art, hopefully they will remember them by the end of the year… And if we switch to smaller assessments, I fear they will only do well because it is fresh in their heads.
  
  This is why I am thinking about maybe big program evaluations (in 4th, 8th and 12th of something like that) and then just keeping the classroom assessments more authentic, formative and smaller.
  
  There must be some schools out there doing this right! Where are they?!
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