Thoughts on assessment

Last week the SEA results were released to the public. Since then their has been much public “talk show debate” on examinations. Examinations or assessment, a word that is quite popular in the Education community. It seems that the view expressed by more than one child psychologist is that traditional tests should not be the only determinant in which secondary school a child attends. In an effort for one to “keep up with the present trends” I decided to focus on the traditional test vs authentic assessment.
Assessment is authentic when we directly examine student performance on worthy intellectual tasks. Traditional assessment, by contract, relies on indirect or proxy 'items'--efficient, simplistic substitutes from which we think valid inferences can be made about the student's performance at those valued challenges. (Grant and Wiggins 1990).
A standardized test is one that is administered under standardized or controlled conditions that specify where, when, how, and for how long children may respond to the questions or "prompts." Standardized tests should meet acceptable standards for technical qualities in construction, administration, and use (Goodwin and Driscoll (1980, pp. 59-60)).
Grant and Wiggins argue that:
Authentic assessment require students to be effective performers with acquired knowledge while traditional tests tend to reveal only whether the student can recognize, recall or "plug in" what was learned out of context.
Authentic assessments present the student with the full array of tasks that mirror the priorities and challenges found in the best instructional activities: conducting research; writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate, etc. while conventional tests are usually limited to paper-and-pencil, one- answer questions.

As a result one believes that authentic assessment would be a better. Better here as a means of assisting in planning instructional goals rather than standardized testing. It is not however the best type of test with respect to placement....