Assessment Philosophy

Assessment serves two primary purposes. The most important is to provide feedback to the teacher in order to improve instruction. Assessments allow teachers to know if how they introduced, reviewed, and reinforced a concept was effective. The second purpose is to provide students and stakeholders with feedback about their musical learning both normatively and individually. Assessments allow students to see growth in themselves and to see where they can continue to improve and should occur daily in class with formative assessments being imbedded into every lesson. Formative assessment begins with lower order questioning, prompting recall and understanding, and moves towards a summative assessment in which students are analyzing, creating, and performing with the musical concept. Summative assessments occur only when students have worked with a concept for a substantial time and allows for students to show their learning in a variety of ways. Performance and creative artifacts are assessed through a co-constructed rubric with clear criteria that is shared with the students from the onset.