Julie Miller, NE Region VP

Assessing Student Assessments

In recent years, many school districts have turned to an increased focus on student assessments. At first, it seemed like just another heaping helping to an already full teaching plate. Then I realized that much of what was being required of all educators was something that art teachers already did—a lot—the administration was just putting it into words.

The new National Core Art Standards suggest that assessments should be imbedded in learning, which is the essence of an art project. The projects allow the students to apply their knowledge of art concepts instead of just reiterating them on a test. It is my opinion that application of learning is a more accurate and practical measure of understanding how to use an art concept than merely writing the words. I have had students that do poorly on the written tests, but create beautiful projects when they apply the concepts to their work. Therein lies the issue where some of the debate among art teachers centers—how to use a common assessment throughout the district with multiple teachers and multiple schools using multiple projects. The solution can be simply to have an assessment that is based on the standards and on the agreed upon student learning objectives. It could be used as a stand-alone test or used as a rubric, which could be applied to any project used to teach the standards and SLOs. This is definitely easier said than done!

There are many positives on my list of what can be gained from assessments in art education. I have found that assessments have made me more aware of my students’ needs. For districts involved with PLCs (Professional Learning Communities), this is essential to what we do in the classroom. The focus is on how students learn, not how we teach. If assessment results show that we need to change up some of our methods, it does not mean that we are doing something wrong, just that it was not the best approach for our students’ learning.

Assessments have also made me more aware of basics that may need re-teaching. For example, a recent CFA (Common Formative Assessment) that I gave to third grade on complementary colors revealed that the students that struggled with complementary colors did not have a grasp on primary colors. I might have overlooked that obvious data otherwise because of the assumption that all third graders certainly must know primary colors.

Assessments have also made me more aware of which of my teaching methods are most effective for retaining learning over time. Through my CFA’s, I found that more of my first graders were better at warm and cool colors than they were at primary and secondary colors. I use raps and lots of visuals for learning warm and cool colors, so I’m thinking I need to develop the same approach for primary and secondary colors. CFA data has shown me that the projects that begin with students experimenting with the media they will be using in the projects provide a better, more lasting understanding of the concepts than projects where I just explain the concepts to them.

Assessments also help me see which grade levels that projects are most appropriate for. If the whole class goes well beyond expectations with a CFA given during a project, perhaps the rigor is not there and it would be better suited for a younger grade level.

Assessments have helped me improvise and revise projects in progress to meet student needs. For example, after reviewing the results of the CFA on complementary colors, I revised a third grade drawing project to include mounting cutouts of the drawings on woven backgrounds of complementary colors to give added practice with that color concept.

Assessments have also helped me revise my expectations of how many projects I can plan on completing during the year. More is not better. I do fewer projects each year than when I first started teaching, but with more introduction, more experimentation, more enrichment activities, more collaborative work, and hopefully a deeper learning and understanding of the concepts.

My overall feeling about the increased focus on assessments is that, although time-consuming and not always easy to fit into our schedules, they do offer valuable information to help us focus on our students’ learning. The catch is, we have to look at the results not as a judgment on our teaching, but an assessment of our students’ learning. We have to be willing to use the data they give us without letting our pride get in the way by repeating our favorite lessons that are not producing the desired results in our students. We have to be willing to change our methods if collaboration with other teachers shows their methods are getting better results than ours. We have to be willing to use the assessment data to improve student learning, not as indicators or our proficiency as teachers. In the end, the primary focus of assessments must be the needs of students, not teachers.

Lynnae Burns
Your WAEA West Central VP Elect

Greetings from the West Central region! I hope this past summer you found time to nourish and recharge your creative soul. As I write this letter to you, I am putting stamps on postcards that my middle school artists designed the last week of school. This annual activity is one that I look forward to doing, surprising them with an artfully designed postcard wishing them a much deserved summer break.

In this column, I would like to share some art advocacy news from the coulee region in La Crosse:

We kicked off our first annual Arts Festival the second weekend of June. Area artist volunteers, in collaboration with the Pump House Regional Art Center, organized Artspire. Leading up to the Artspire Festival, I worked with a local group of artists and poets to create chalk murals all over our downtown at various sidewalks, business walls and parking lots. The "Arts Initiative" group placed art images and text celebrating the arts to make this event a success in our community. I was delighted and honored to have seven of my students volunteer their time and art talent in chalking over 10 murals for this event. On the eve of this arts festival, our newest art acquisition, a mural painted in the Tromp L’oeil style by muralist, John Pugh, was unveiled to the community, followed by a street dance celebration. Over 40 local artists had their works for sale for the festival. Live music, interactive art-making activities for kids and food all accompanied the event. We had an amazing art exhibit going on inside the Pump House from May 1st throughout June 28th. In response to the theme of "compassion," our K-12 students were invited to participate in creating their personal interpretation of what compassion meant to them. The Compassion Project Exhibit filled the Pump House walls with over 6,000 6"x6" canvas tiles. This exhibit will live on throughout the community, as there was much interest from businesses and local leaders that wanted to hang our artwork in their space when our show came down.

I recently collaborated with over 30 art, music, non-profit and Viterbo University education professors and administration cohorts to plan an "arts integration" initiative. This planning was very exciting. It is our hope that our pre-service art teachers will have a strong ongoing partnership with our local art department in the La Crosse school district and with non-profit organizations and provide them support once they are teaching in their own classrooms. We anxiously wait to see if we will be recipients for this funding. My head and heart is full from brainstorming the possibilities for art integration being a natural way for all educators to teach and not a process that a handful of teachers and students experience. Advocating what we do in the art studio and how we naturally connect the process of artmaking to all disciplines is turning heads. As we all know, the experiences we provide in our classrooms should be authentic art experiences and are essential to the joy of learning for our young.

Do share what exciting art collaborations and artmaking events are going on in your community. I am off to plan a sketch box bike drawing club. Keep creating, collaborating and dreaming!