Authentic Assessment in Education

by Patrice Maynard

On Saturday, April 25, at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, a few more than 60 people from different arenas of education gathered together to discuss how to recapture the imagination of teaching as a vocation, student assessment as something other than a test, and education as an art, not a technical delivery system.

The Avalon Initiative [edrenewal.org], a research project of The Research Institute for Waldorf Education [waldorfresearchinstitute.org] in collaboration with the Hawthorne Valley Association’s Center for Social Research

[thecenterforsocialresearch.org] sponsored and formed the day’s work. We accidentally met hot on the heels of the recent round of Common Core testing in New York and the successful “Opt Out: Refuse the Test” effort. Up to 200,000 families opted out and kept their children home or requested that their children stay at school in study halls on the testing days. This number is up from 60,000 in the last round and is a statistically significant slice of the 1.1 million school-age children in New York.

Public, charter, independent schools, homeschoolers, and Waldorf school teachers and administrators were involved all day in lively presentations and discussions of vital imaginations for the future of education and cultural renewal in education.

A panel comprising Katie Zahedi, PhD, assistant professor at SUNY New Paltz and former principal at the Red Hook Middle School, Heinz-Dieter Meyer, PhD, Associate professor at SUNY Albany, and Carol Bärtges, doctoral candidate and teacher of comparative literature at the New York City Rudolf Steiner School, launched the day with vibrant ideas about a new approach to teaching, learning, and accountability in America. Gary Lamb acted as primary convener and moderator for the day with Patrice Maynard acting as facilitator.

Katie spoke of the success of the Opt-Out movement, which she helped to energize and foster in New York State; and of the sacred relationship between teacher and student, unmeasurable with technology-driven testing. Heinz-Dieter Meyer spoke, as he has all over the world, and with particular clarity in India and in his classes in the United States, of his vision of the administration of education in which teachers play a pivotal role in determining appropriate assessments and accountability measures with politics and economic interests uninvolved. Carol Bärtges spoke of her years of experience in the classroom and how she assesses students using her own intuitive capacities and expertise in her Waldorf school. Carol also spoke of research being published by Academica Press, Assessment for Learning in a Waldorf School, chronicling the means of assessment used in Waldorf schools without a single, standardized test (available from www.waldorfpublications.org).

One highlight of the day’s activities was the presentations by four eighth and ninth grade students who read their poetry about their experiences taking the language arts state tests. Poised and clear, these young people gave a chilling description of what the tests do to children during the test-taking hours. One of the members of the support team from Omega cried when she heard them rehearsing. She has been a teacher herself and appreciated deeply the eloquent expression of despair, anxiety, boredom, and wishes these students captured in their poetry.

We all left with new understanding of how the artificial barriers of “public and private,” “us and them,” “Republicans and Democrats,” are distractions from the high vocational calling of “teacher” that we, who teach or support teachers, all share. The day was remarkable and important for the future of education in America.

Patrice Maynard (patrice@waldorf-research.org) is Director of Publications and Development at the Research Institute for Waldorf Education.

Gary Lamb introduces local public school 8th and 9th grade students who read poems of what it is like to take standardized tests.

Patrice Maynard (l) and Katie Zahedi (r) spoke of the artificial divide being made between public schools and private schools, when all teacher are vocationally called to serve children. Katie spoke of the sacred space between a teacher and her students that defies digital measures.

On a beautiful sunny day at Omega Institute Heinz-Dieter Meyer spoke of the need for teachers to be free of political and economic control of education.

Carol Bärtges regaled teachers with stories of assessment as a Waldorf teacher and explained the new publication Assessment for Learning in Waldorf Classrooms, peer-reviewed research on nontesting approaches.

In small group discussions, Waldorf, private, public, homeschool and charter school educators spoke of professional evaluations done by relevant professionals.