will we really know what students have learned? Or how they compare to kids in Singapore?”


Standardization is about uniformity and comparison. Assessment is something else entirely.


What advice would I have for those who would like to do a better job of assessing learning in the arts?


First: Teachers must know their students. You can’t evalu- ate growth unless you have a handle on these particular kids, at this time. You might know that four year-olds in Ja- pan are capable of repeating five-note tunes on violins with a high degree of accuracy. But that doesn’t tell you what experiences the four year-olds in front of you have had in making music--or what they’re capable of doing. Standard- ized testing is the antithesis of knowing individual students well, and creatively pushing them to exceed expectations.


Second: Be clear about learning goals. While you’re at it, set challenging and worthy goals--always asking why those goals are important for your students. A lot of the problems in designing assessments in the arts come from a mismatch between what teachers hope and believe they’re teaching and what students are actually learning.


Yes, you can test students’ precise recall of major periods of Western art music--key composers, developments in composition styles, etc. And for a time, your students will “know” that Bach was a Baroque composer, and sonata- allegro form emerged in the Classical period.


But suppose the learning goal was bigger than memoriz- ing historical periods and key composers--say, tracing the elements that shaped Western art music? Students would understand that technologies (materials, keys, slides, manufacturing techniques, etc.) impact aspects of musical composition, that harmony developed roughly aligned with the scientific overtone series, that music in non-Western cultures developed very differently--and so on. While these learning goals are richer, and transferable to other disciplines--not to mention more important in understand- ing development of music-- they’re not easily measured by multiple-guess tests.


Third: Use diverse metrics for different skills and con- cepts. Available, cheap assessment tools should not de- termine what gets assessed: learning goals come before assessment design. In music, some things can be measured only by observation and skilled listening. Some things require assessment in groups--choral blend, for example. Some things are best assessed by straight-up musical performance and a rubric. Others are best evaluated via discussion, student compositions (written, improvised,


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performed), movement, writing critiques, and so on. All assessment modes have worth.


Fourth: Value application, interpretation and analysis over replication. Assessment in the arts has to include more than accurate reproduction. All student musicians are familiar with “down the row” assessment: Teacher assigns difficult passage, then goes down the row, grading each performance. If first musician is exactly correct, subse- quent students can benefit from a good model (or suffer by comparison). Last person in line often benefits most. What the teacher thinks they’re assessing: Who practiced? But what they’re actually assessing may be students’ ability to imitate. And none of it has anything to do with higher- order, lifetime musical skills and knowledge.


Fifth: Value self-assessment most of all. Teach students to self-evaluate, using excellent models, open-ended questions and assignments, and understanding the essential charac- teristics of excellent work. There will always be contests, festivals, competitions and grades in the arts. Inculcating an informed sense of self-critique is far more valuable in the long run than trying to get a top rating.


Sixth: Don’t consistently privilege one learning mode over another when you assess.


I would also argue that there isn’t much value in rigidly standardizing arts curricula, either, something that usually goes hand in hand with standardized testing. Broad content and performance standards can be very useful, but cur- riculum should always reflect the students in front of the teacher.


In developing the National Board assessments for accom- plished teacher knowledge in music, the NBPTS standards on which the assessments are based say that teachers should “demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the musical and stylistic differences that distinguish the music of vari- ous historical periods, genres, styles, cultures, and media,” including “the cultural and historical context in which they were developed.”


The national team of assessment creators agreed we needed a performance test that measured teachers’ knowledge of music history. Some of us assumed that would be a tradi- tional analysis of historical periods and masterworks of Western art music, the large majority of which were created in Europe. The stuff we studied in college.


Some of our team attended historically black colleges, however--and argued that what they learned in their uni- versity-level music history classes was more relevant to our students: the African roots of American pop music, for


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