Book Description

Problem Statement: The purpose of this study is to find and design valid and reliable performance-based authentic assessments for grades 2 and 4 in the general music classroom. The assessments will be derived from the three artistic processes: creating, performing, and responding to music. The MENC National Standards for Music Education is the basis for the Simsbury Public Schools (SPS) K-12 music curriculum and thus, the development of assessment tasks will focus on those 9 standards. Music educators in the Simsbury Public Schools are expected to follow the curriculum based around those 9 standards, by guiding their students through the three artistic processes. Therefore, most assessments in SPS are performance-based, as the students are normally engaged in active participation and performance. Specific measurement tools will accompany each assessment task which will show either student growth or student achievement. By studying these assessment tasks, tools, and data, educators will be able to gain insight into how to develop tasks, measure them, and quantify data so that it is valid to their classrooms. Most importantly, these tasks and measurement tools will have practical applications in almost any general music classroom, and they will show how performance-based assessments can help teachers and students without disrupting the flow of the classroom, stifling the creativity of the teacher or students, or taking up valuable time in which the students should be engaged in meaningful musical experiences.