How to Assess Authentic Learning

"Burke has challenged teachers everywhere to raise their standards and design classroom assessments that show evidence of understanding and performance on complex tasks. The expert examples in this book provide teachers with a complete road map so that assessment is truly at the heart of instruction."
―Diane Ray, Assistant Director for Teacher Leader Development
Professional Association of Georgia Educators

Create assessments that meet state standards and target students′ learning needs!

For many years, assessment was relegated to a secondary role in the educational process. But with the increased emphasis on high-stakes testing, effective assessment has emerged as one of the major factors in raising student achievement.

In this latest edition of her bestseller, renowned educator Kay Burke provides a wide range of updated, easy-to-implement alternative assessments that address today′s accountability requirements and focus on improving learning. Designed for use across all content areas, these formative assessments are rooted in the language of state standards and emphasize differentiating instruction to meet students′ individual learning needs. Revised throughout with updated research, this new edition helps K–12 teachers:

• Build Response to Intervention checklists for struggling students
• Develop unit plans using differentiated learning and assessment strategies
• Create portfolios that emphasize metacognition
• Design performance tasks that motivate and engage students
• Construct rubrics that describe indicators of quality work
• Create tests that focus on higher-order thinking skills

Offering numerous applications and examples, How to Assess Authentic Learning guides teachers in developing the assessment tools needed to help all students meet or exceed mandated academic standards.

Kay Burke has served as an award-winning classroom teacher and a school administrator, university instructor, and international professional developer. She works with Kay Burke & Associates, LLC, to provide workshops for teachers and administrators in standards-based learning, performance assessment, classroom management, mentoring, and portfolio development. For the past 18 years, Burke has presented at state and national conferences such as ASCD, NSDC, NAESP, NASSP, NMSA, and IRA as well as international conferences in Canada and Australia. She is the author of 10 professional development books and coauthor of a college textbook on assessment. Corwin Press published Burke′s best-selling From Standards to Rubrics in Six Steps: Tools for Assessing Student Learning, K–8 (2006), a 2007 finalist for the Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Educational Publishing presented by the Association of Educational Publishers. Other books published by Corwin Press include How to Assess Authentic Learning, Fourth Edition (2005) and What to Do With the Kid Who: Developing Cooperation, Self-Discipline and Responsibility in the Classroom (Third Edition).