What Are Authentic Assessments?

What Are Authentic Assessments? Is it authentic to have a student deliver a persuasive speech about climate change to an audience of teenagers, not policymakers?  Is it authentic to have a student complete a blog project that gets shared among classmates but not posted online for a wider audience?  Is it authentic to have students write an essay under timed conditions that no one but the teacher will read?

To establish a definition for authentic assessment, let’s look at what the University of Illinois Chicago’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence says about it: 

“Authentic assessments involve the application of knowledge and skills in real-world situations, scenarios, or problems,” and they “create a student-centered learning experience by providing students opportunities to problem-solve, inquire, and create new knowledge and meaning.” 

That sounds like an authentic authentic assessment definition to me!  With that definition of authentic assessment in mind, then, I can’t help but reflect on the types of assessments typically seen in the classroom.

Real-World Situations, Scenarios, or Problems

Think about authentic assessment versus traditional assessment in the classroom.  Ideally, authentic or not, assessment comes in two flavors–formative and summative.

Formative assessment is assessment for learning–a diagnostic, checking in on what students know and can do now (either before or after instruction), priming them for more instruction, intervention, support, and/or enrichment.

Summative assessment is assessment of learning–an evaluation, checking in on what students know and can do at the end of an instructional sequence that involved teaching, learning, intervention, support, and/or enrichment.

A traditional assessment can certainly be both formative and summative.  

For instance, if I am teaching students how to properly use a semicolon to join together two complete sentences, I can assign students a formative pre-test asking them to add a semicolon in the right place or to identify which sentence uses a semicolon correctly.  

From the results of that pre-test, I can determine who’s got it and who’s gotta learn it.  I can then instruct and intervene as necessary, ensuring each student is getting it.  

But how do I know if they got it? Assessment, that’s how.  

At the end of my instructional sequence, students are ready for the biggie–the summative.  Here, then, is the quiz where I ask students to write several sentences using a semicolon properly or select A-B-C-or-D to identify where a semicolon was used correctly.  

At this point, I would hope we can all celebrate students’ semicolon skills; that would be amazing.  

But in that instructional sequence of formative and summative assessments did students encounter real-world situations, scenarios or problems?  

I don’t think so.  (How often, for example, does your principal ask you to take a multiple choice test at work?)  

Perhaps then that’s a good way to think of traditional vs. authentic assessments: 

Does what we are asking students to do look like school work?  (Schoolwork = it’s good at this moment, for this class, on this occasion.) 

Or does it look like the situations, scenarios, or problems we are going to expect students to solve in the world around them? 

(Unless I’m mistaken here, I don’t think the reason we haven’t stopped climate change is because someone picked A instead of C, for example.)

Authentic Assessment Benefits

So what are authentic assessments? Authentic assessments are assessments that fit the world around us, not just the walls of the classroom trapping us. I can see the benefits of that. We aren’t limiting students to share with us their learning in one way; we are, instead, giving them the opportunity to show growth and learning in different ways.  

We aren’t developing knowledge and skills specific and limited to future English teachers; we are, instead, building skills for life and learning wherever they go. 

In short, with authentic assessment, we are giving students permission to take risks, to learn, and to grow as they take on classroom tasks that parallel real-life ones.

Authentic Assessment Examples: Writing

So what does authentic assessment in the classroom look like? 

How can we move students’ voices out of the vacuum of the classroom? 

How can we make arguments persuasive and convincing to an audience beyond the teacher? 

How can students write about something that matters to them rather than something that matters to the teacher?

Here are some ideas and examples:

1. Find a writing contest that’s appropriate for your curriculum and level.  For example, the New York Times hosts a variety of student-writing contests throughout the course of the year for everything from narratives to editorials.  These writing contests put students’ writing in front of an audience outside of the classroom and ask students to write in the style of what people read in the “real world.”

2. Take inspiration from the College Board.  One of the essays for AP English Language and Composition is a synthesis prompt for which students read a prompt and then digest visual and written texts (sources) to inform their opinion and help craft their line of reasoning.  

These prompts center-on real-world issues, conversations, and subjects (like space exploration, federal currency, eminent domain, etc.).  

Perhaps begin with one of these prompts and ask students to investigate these real-world issues/questions/subjects, select an audience to write to, and then craft an argument to share.

(For instance, a student could write a letter to Elon Musk about SpaceX and space exploration. Maybe he’d even tweet a response–if Twitter is still around.)

3. Try podcasting or blogging. Assignments that integrate writing as a part of a larger product with a wider audience and purpose, that involve inquiry and use of multiple skills are engaging AND authentic.

4. Have students practice the art of rhetoric by writing to a real entity: a parent, adult, teacher, organization, political figure, etc. The key here is actually sending the letter! 

Authentic Assessment Examples: Reading

How can we make sure students aren’t skipping a book and getting a summary from a website?  

How can we keep students from asking ChatGPT to tell them the theme of a poem?  

How can we interest students in challenging themselves as readers?  

Here are some ideas and examples:

1. Form student book clubs.  If we know the skills we are teaching students, arguably, we can select just about any developmentally and curriculum-appropriate text to help them learn those skills.  Or, better yet, we can let students have a choice in selecting those texts (even if it’s from a curated list of texts we provide to them).  

If we think of the reading that adults do (when they aren’t immersed in TikToks themselves), it’s in books of their choosing connected to something in which they are interested or about which they want to know more. 

Many adults join book clubs, too, where they create (or find) questions to help them think about style, purpose, theme, plot, etc. as they collaboratively analyze a text.  

We can mimic this in the classroom, helping students see the long-term value in reading in the real-world and assess their reading skills in real-time during discussions and reflections.  

(After all, if it’s good enough for Oprah, it’s probably good enough for our students.)

2. Understand and address a real-world problem or issue.  On the local, national, and international level, questions are debated everywhere.  

Likely, our students aren’t experts on these subjects–but they can gain an informed opinion by reading the perspectives of others and understanding how their thinking is shaped by what they read.  

As such, you could ask students to read a variety of perspectives on a subject/issue/topic/question. Then, ask students to summarize the sources’ arguments, noting the sources’ purpose(s), claim(s), and evidence.  

By giving students the ability to construct an informed opinion, you are giving them opportunities to problem solve, inquire, and create new knowledge and meaning (all parts of the authentic assessment definition)–which could culminate in an essay, speech, editorial, etc., perhaps in a they say I say format where students show their understanding of others’ perspectives and use them to support (and even challenge) their own.

3. Have students engage in a passion project or inquiry project. The sources they find serve the purpose of showcasing their learning in an authentic way. This purpose amps up reading engagement. 

Inspiration from Everywhere

Indeed, when we think of authentic assessment in the classroom, we can take inspiration from anywhere. 

As I sit here typing this blog post, for instance, I think about how this is my very own blog project authentic assessment.  

I’m not being graded or scored by a teacher; I’m being read and evaluated by you, curious reader!  

To complete this blog project, I’m considering a number of real-world factors: the desires of my audience, search engine optimization, my professional expertise, deadlines, the information available already online, etc. 

 When I’m done typing the blog post, I go through and edit and revise because I want you to see me as authoritative, credible. 

The final blog project – the summative – posted and shared online in the “real world” “is about as authentic as it comes as I await feedback from you, curious reader.  

So… like and share the post if you think I should get an A on this authentic assessment–because nothing’s more authentic than a letter signifying my attainment of a skill, right? 😉