Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessments emerged in the 1980s as alternatives to traditional methods of assessing students’ performance in schools. Authentic assessments are designed to encourage students to perform tasks that they might encounter in the “real world”; they encourage students to produce knowledge and engage in disciplined inquiry that requires them to use their prior knowledge, gain an in-depth understanding of the problem being addressed, and employ a variety of different skills and intelligences. They are often designed to give students multiple opportunities to revise and improve upon their work and to be active participants in the evaluation of their performance, progress, and learning.

Authentic assessments take many forms and can be implemented in a variety of ways. Portfolio construction, journals, debates, labs, and research projects are just a small sample of the large number of authentic assessment activities teachers can use to learn about their students. Correspondingly,...