Glenn Korff School of Music, and I'm also President-elect of the National Association for Music

Education. You, as pre-service music educators are about to

enter the profession at a very exciting time. We're on the

cusp of some real breakthroughs nationally, particularly in our advocacy

efforts to have recognized music as part of the core

curriculum. Further, we're about to introduce a revised version of

our national music standards. For at least two decades now,

we've been on a journey to help students acquire the

knowledge and the skills necessary to participate authentically in the arts

for a lifetime. The 1994 music standards

emphasized what every student should know and be able to

do: products. Now, with the revised

standards, we will emphasize a process-oriented nature of

music and music-learning. My purpose today

is to help us to understand the role of

measurement and assessment in a revised standards environment, and secondly,

to preview what some assessment tasks call

cornerstone assessments might look like in this environment.

Most of you were probably evaluated using

a model that progressed something like this: your teacher wrote objectives

and a lesson plan, and then they taught to that

particular content. They identified the skills and the knowledge

that you should have. Then, they gave you some time to practice the

skill or to learn the content, and then they tested you

on that content. The revised standards are based on a new

model for teaching that turns the process around

and asks the teacher to begin thinking about the test first.

Actually, we hope you'll be thinking about assessing student growth using

a series of authentic musical tasks rather than just one test.

A little more on that later. A backwards design

framework based on the book "Understanding by Designs" by McTighe

and Wiggins from 2005 was selected in our

revised national standards model to assist educators in first determining

acceptable evidence of attainment, and then designing the best

path for achieving those desired results.

Actually, that's not quite right either. We don't want to think

just about the test. Did you ever wonder why we hear

less and less about tests and measurement and more and more about assessing

and assessment? Well, that's because a test is simply a measurement

device, a way of gathering information. I can write

a sixteen measure melody that contains some rhythms and articulations we've been

singing or playing in band, chorus, or orchestra in the music we've been

rehearsing. That then will test your mastery of certain

rhythms and articulations. Assessment is a much broader

process than that. It draws on measurements and

other tasks to determine if growth, and that word growth is key, is

taking place in the individual. By the way, determining if growth

is taking place in the learner has become a very important

element in teacher evaluation now: termed value added

assessment. Currently, I've been working with a team of

individuals from across the country to design sample cornerstone

assessment tasks that will eventually be a part of the revised standard

content. I want to emphasize that the example I'm about to show you is simply

a draft at this point, but it will serve us well in terms of understanding

some of the ways in which cornerstone assessments are

different from traditional tests. Here's a sample of a cornerstone

assessment. The draft performance standard would go something like this

:using pieces currently rehearsed by an ensemble, students will

select a work that enables multiple expressive interpretations;

identify expressive performance challenges, set expressive

performance goals, document processes of addressing the challenges,

and accomplishment attained; and complete an evaluation comparing observations from

two points in time.

Now, you will note that this is a very

different sort of measurement from

the sixteen measure rhythm and articulation test that I described earlier.

the sixteen measure rhythm and articulation test that I described earlier.

the sixteen measure rhythm and articulation test that I described earlier.

I'd like to now point out some of the characteristics

of corner stone assessments embedded in this draft sample, and

so doing so I think I have a better understanding of what a corner stone assessment task really is.

The opening portion of this particular

corner stone assessment says, "Using pieces currently rehearsed

by an ensemble," so in other words, the

material for this assessment is going to be drawn from

the curriculum and things that were embedded in the curriculum itself

It's not an extra test that the teacher devised

after the fact. Secondly, if we read on, "students

will select a work," it's not the teacher selecting

the task, but the students themselves are going to select from

the pieces or songs they've been rehearsing.

we move down a little bit further, we'll notice that where I have the number three there

that we're going to set some expressive performance goals, and

document the processes of addressing the challenges

that they find. So there again you see that emphasis on the word process

rather than product at the end. It's not just whether you can sing or play this correctly

but it has to do with what kinds of

processes did you use in order to

obtain that particular goal. Finally,

near the end of the description of the assessment task, you will see that

the student is to "complete an evaluation

comparing observations from two points in time," and

that is very key here because now we see the importance of growth.

We're going tot see what the student is able to do

with respect to this particular piece at the beginning, then there's some time to practice,

identify the challenges, and so forth, and then for the student

to sing or play this piece again. So you have these

to sing or play this piece again. So you have these comparisons, and we're looking

process where by they got ot the final goal of

this particular performance. Alright, so

I think you can see that assesment as changed quite a bit. It's not just about

constructing tests anymore. Imagine the fun your students are going to have being engaged.

in authentic musical tasks, and also imagine the pride that you're going to feel

as a music educator being able to document the musical growth that has take place

in the students in your classroom. Here are some characteristics to help us

understand better this concept of corner stone assessments which again comes from

McTighe and Wiggens' book "Understanding by

Design." First of all, cornerstone assessments are embedded in the

curriculum. They are drawn from the task that

you are working on everyday within the rehearsal or in

the classroom. The second characteristic is that these

cornerstone assessments recur over the grades, in terms of ever

increasing spirals of complexity. So

a performer in the fifth grade who has just picked up their violin or their new instrument

is going to have the same time of task, but it will take

place with much less

detail with respect to the kinds of things that the student will be asked to do.

A third characteristic of cornerstone assessments is that they occur

in authentic contexts. By this we mean it's not

just filling in the blank of a bubble sheet, but the students are actually

playing or singing the music that they have been rehearsing.

Another characteristic of understanding and

transfer. It's not enough just to repeat

in a rote learning sort of way what the student has learned

and demonstrate that they can remember it to the teacher. Can they transfer

it to another situation which is similar?

Another characteristic of cornerstone assessment involves the

integration of 21st century skills. We hear a lot about these skills:

critical thinking, technology use, teamwork. All

of these kinds of 21st century skills should be integrated

with demonstrating music knowledge and skills in a

cornerstone assessment. Another characteristic involves

the evaluation of the performance with

established rubrics. This takes a bit of time, of course, to delineate

the various levels of attainment in the rubric

but it helps the student understand, in a holistic type of way, the kinds of

things that they are doing with the task as a whole.

Another characteristic involves engaging students in meaningful learning.

Again, this is not just a fill in the blank, is this a quarter note? Is this the correct

rhythm and so forth? The students are actually engaged in

making music, so the learning is indeed meaningful.

A final characteristic that McTighe points out has to do with providing

content for student portfolios. Often we're asked to document,

particularly again this idea of growth, and when we have

recordings of students performing, first

at the beginning and then working with some instruction, and then another

performance in time, we begin to collect, with videos and

so forth, a good set of information that can

be used in student portfolios.