Creating an Academy of Learning: Authentic Assessment, Peer Review, and the College and Work Readiness Assessment

Autor/in	Austin, John
Titel	Creating an Academy of Learning: Authentic Assessment, Peer Review, and the College and Work Readiness Assessment
Quelle	In: Independent School, 69 (2010) 3 PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0145-9635
Schlagwörter	Performance Based Assessment; Position Papers; Educational Change; Private Schools; Academic Achievement; Peer Evaluation; College Readiness; Citizenship; Educational Improvement; Delaware + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Leistungsermittlung; Positionspapier; Bildungsreform; Private school; Privatschule; Schulleistung; Staatsbürgerschaft; Teaching improvement; Unterrichtsentwicklung
Abstract	Most agree that schools have a special obligation to study the effectiveness of their educational programs and seek ways to improve student learning. Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University, has persuasively argued that schools must envision themselves as "learning organizations." Like hospitals and businesses, Bok writes, schools should "engage in an ongoing process of improvement by constantly evaluating their performance, identifying problems, trying various remedies, measuring their success, discarding those that do not work, and incorporating those that do." Yet, as Bok goes on to note, few schools are willing to "reexamine familiar practices and search for new methods that could serve the purpose better," and fewer still provide faculty the incentives or the means to conduct such studies. In this article, the author discusses how St. Andrew's School (Delaware) has taken up Bok's challenge and sought to become what its head of school, Tad Roach, calls an "academy of learning." Efforts to assess in more authentic and nourishing ways have been strengthened and given focus not only by its recently revised (2006) mission statement--which speaks of its commitment to help students "do the work of scholars, artists, and scientists"--but by two other recent initiatives: (1) the schoolwide use of "teaching portfolios" in which teachers share their assessment practices with one another in a process that resembles scholarly "peer review"; and (2) the four-year involvement with a new assessment tool, "The College and Work Readiness Assessment" (CWRA). This latter initiative, already in use by a handful of secondary schools and hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the country, measures students' ability to think critically, reason analytically, problem solve, and write--skills widely acknowledged by a broad spectrum of the educational community to be essential for work and citizenship. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	National Association of Independent Schools. 1620 L Street NW Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 800-793-6701; Tel: 202-973-9700; Fax: 202-973-9790; Web site: http://www.nais.org
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10