Developing and Applying Assessments in the Music Classroom

Kelly A. Parkes, Frederick Burrack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429514357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Developing and Applying Assessments in the Music Classroom addresses the challenges faced by today's K-12 educators and future music educators who are expected to utilize and incorporate assessment data as a hallmark of student learning and reflection of effective teaching. Highlighting best practices while presenting current scholarship and literature, this practical workbook-style text provides future music teachers with a framework for integrating assessment processes in the face of a certain lack of understanding and possible dissatisfaction with assessment tools and tasks. Each chapter is prefaced by an overview outlining learning expectations and essential questions, and supplemented throughout by an array of pedagogical features:

• Discussion prompts
• Activities and worksheets
• Learning experiences
• Expanded reference lists

Citing examples across a range of musical settings—e.g. band, chorus, orchestra, jazz, and piano and guitar labs— Developing and Applying Assessments in the Music Classroom builds from the classroom assessment paradigm, encouraging teachers to create assessment tasks most appropriate to their curricula goals and planned student outcomes. Joined by fellow experts in the field Brian C. Wesolowski and Phillip Payne, the authors invite readers to explore and apply the material in authentic ways to inspire student learning through a comprehensive approach to educative assessment.

1
Historical Foundations

Kelly A. Parkes

Chapter Overview

This chapter explores the political policies and educational developments that led to an increased focus on assessment in music classrooms in the USA. The chapter explains traditional and modern assessments, with a focus on classroom assessments.

Learning Expectations for the Chapter

• Describe the political policies that led to modern assessment in music education.
• Describe the difference between traditional and modern assessment measures.
• Identify the difference between standardized and classroom assessments.
• Describe existing measures of music achievement.

Essential Questions for the Chapter

• What are the differences between traditional and modern assessments?
• What are standardized tests?
• What are classroom assessments?
• How are classroom assessments used as part of educational assessment in music?

Introduction

When we consider assessment at large, it is important to have clarity around the term. Assessment, as explored in this book, is to be considered as educational assessment. Assessment in education is a process that includes measurement and evaluation. The assessment process involves collecting information (data) via a variety of measurement methods that are relevant to making educational decisions. The educational assessment process communicates information about teaching processes and about student learning. This impacts teachers’ instructional choices and guides student progress. Measures can be tests, portfolios, checklists, and rubrics. Evaluation occurs when teachers analyze qualitative (words) and quantitative (numerical) data to make a decision of value, worth, merit, or effectiveness. An evaluation is what occurs as a result of an effective assessment process. Evaluations are based on information that has been collected and synthesized to make an educational decision about the extent to which objectives have been achieved. In contrast to evaluations seen on social media platforms (for example, those that determine the quality of restaurants), educational assessments require a wide variety of data and objective measures to guide decisions. Historically, in the USA, learning theories, political decisions, and curriculum reform have impacted educational assessment. Educational assessment is the method by which all aspects of education are measured.

National assessment in the USA started in the late 1960s with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2016), which included music beginning in the academic year 1971–1972. The NAEP music test includes multiple choice and constructed-response items to illustrate what a nationally representative set of eighth graders know about music. NAEP results represent academic achievement of the nation as a whole. The music portion report (NAEP, 2016) showed that 63% of eighth graders took a music class and that their scores remained similar to the scores of eighth graders who took the test in 2008. These national data suggest that females scored higher on average than their male peers and that students in private schools scored higher on average than those in public schools in music. Although there is a use for large-scale tests, the few that are available in music do not measure achievement of applied music skills or how students apply the knowledge they have attained.

Traditional Approaches

Early approaches to educational assessment were based on objective tests, aligned with behaviorist theories of teaching and learning. Payne (2003) explains that traditional measures were focused on lower-level objectives and structured in a fixed-response style to be machine-scoreable. Early testing would detect correct or incorrect answers on a test by counting the small circles filled in by test takers using Scantron technology. Scantron technology emerged in the 1970s and uses optical mark recognition, identifying dark marks on paper as contrasted by light passing through. Scantron technology is still in use today. These test measures (multiple-choice tests) had evidence of high reliability and were low in cost to administer but also provoked anxiety in students when used for consequential, high-stakes decisions. These measures are what we refer to as standardized tests, developed out of the psychology field’s intelligence testing, where they were adapted to measure classroom content. The origin of this format was introduced in education early in the 20th century to measure student achievement but then quickly expanded to be used to modify curricula and pedagogy. In addition to this, achievement data were also used as screenings for military positions, employment in business firms, and entrance to universities. Student-centered teachers opposed the use of such tests from their inception; however, their use persisted as test developers purported their use to identify teacher competence as well as student learning. The tests did not actually reveal information about teacher competence, yet the notion incorrectly persists today. In the public view, these tests were initially supported because they promised educational accountability, and this has since been cultivated politically as evidence of quality in education (Giordano, 2005). Although mostly outside of music, these standardized tests remain prevalent because they provide a “systematic sample of performance obtained under prescribed conditions, scored to definite rules, and capable of evaluation by reference to normative information” (Payne, 2003, p. 578). They are administered across schools, districts, and states to compare students’ performance on the test to other students taking the same test. This is called norm-referenced testing. When teachers want to determine whether a student has achieved a particular set of knowledge or a specific skill, within a specific discipline, they would use criterion-referenced tests that measure specific criteria related to instructional objectives. In this case, scores of other students are not examined and the results of criterion-referenced tests are usually given as percentages.

Traditional approaches to assessment have revolved largely around multiple-choice and essay formats. When used for numeracy and knowledge attainment, this is reasonable. An essay demonstrates literacy of written communication skills, and multiple-choice tests allow test takers to choose the correct answer to a mathematical problem or demonstrate knowledge retention. When we consider educational outcomes for musicality in performance and decision-making in preparation and the creative processes often expected in music learning, modern approaches offer more appropriate assessment methods. In music, there are defined competencies that result in musical behaviors. For example, (a) accurate reading of printed music allows students to reproduce music in performance or (b) recognizing tonality helps maintain melodic flow in improvisation. We can’t identify music reading competency until we hear the outcome during a music performance or, in the case of the second example, recognize understanding of tonality until we hear their melodic improvisation. With numerous competencies being part of music learning, modern music assessment processes are essential.

Modern Approaches

There is evidence indicating that public attitudes toward traditional standardized testing are changing as we see the opt-out movement rising in some states in the USA, in which parents are protesting the ways in which schools assess their children. Pizmony-Levy (2018) reported that 11 states had opt-out rates higher than 5%. New York has seen a 20% opt-out rate from annual tests, Colorado 8% for seventh grade and 11% for eighth grade, and Alaska’s opt-out rate is 8.5%. This change in attitude toward standardized testing may come from skepticism about the usefulness of standardized tests as well as the desire for education reform. Educational assessment processes and measures have been developed and improved over the past century due to new theories of learning, curricula reform, and political decisions. Policy decisions such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the changes made to it in 1994, the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, and the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 have increased the focus on student test scores and the evaluation of teachers and, as such, have impacted how assessment is used in US schools.

Modern assessment processes include classroom-embedded exams, authentic assessments, performance assessments, direct and indirect assessments, and portfolio assessments. Modern measures focus on indicators of learning outcomes to better understand how students understand and apply what has been taught. The purpose of an assessment process is to produce data that can be used to improve learning and guide instructional and curricular improvement. Modern assessment processes focus on objectives that require students to interact with content at a high level of complexity. These processes require of a variety of measures exhibiting student-constructed responses that include oral, written, product-based, and observation formats through which students demonstrate learning. Modern assessment processes can be complex and multidimensional (Payne, 2003), with a high level of validity and high evidence of reliability when developers and scorers are trained. Modern assessments can be less threatening to learners and result in information useful to teachers and their students (Payne, 2003). They take into account cognitive and constructivist understandings of learning, research findings that have resulted from multiple educational studies. Modern assessments are cost-effective measures since most are administered in classrooms. Most importantly, the data can be formatively used to support student learning in the music classroom. These assessments enable teachers to engage with students in classroom activities that combine learning and application, thus constructing knowledge together. The learner gains insight about their progress and the teacher receives guidance on how to plan further instruction to meet the learners’ needs. These measures allow teachers to be responsive to learners’ needs and, when used alongside of standardized tests, can give a comprehensive illustration of learners’ knowledge and skills.

Standardized Music Tests

Teachers in music have been required to collect student learning data since 2009, after policies were put in place to increase teacher accountability. In 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted and provided over $4 billion to assist educators in meeting the goals of the act. The Race to the Top program (US Department of Education, 2009) was competitive grant funding that rewarded states for developments in reforming education and required some form of accountability. One focus was on developing data systems that measured student growth, ostensibly to also illustrate strengths and weaknesses in teachers. Accountability for K-12 achievement evolved into evaluation systems to illustrate teacher quality by using students’ achievement scores. State departments of education required school districts to use large-scale, standardized test data collected in math and reading as evidence of teacher quality. Music teachers (along with other non-tested subject teachers, e.g., physical education) were unable to illustrate their teaching quality because they could not show what their students had learned with data (for a detailed description, see Sherwin & McQuarrie, 201...