Instead of late-night cramming and tutorials on how to ace multiple-choice tests, Joshua Koenig prepared for finals by rehearsing a PowerPoint presentation on the challenges of trading stock options and what he learned while attempting to climb Mt. Rainier with his father.
When the day came, the 18-year-old's audience at Wildwood School in West Los Angeles included parents, grandparents and friends, as well as teachers and advisors who judged whether his performance demonstrated his growth as a learner.
As thousands of public school students sat for standardized tests last week and others prepare for upcoming final exams, Wildwood is one of a number of schools across the country using oral presentations -- or exhibitions -- to determine students' readiness to move on to the next grade, or in Koenig's case, to graduate.
In an era when the federal No Child Left Behind Act and California's state high school exit exam exert pressure on students to master standardized fill-in-the-bubble tests, a growing number of educators argue that exhibitions offer a better way to assess students' academic achievements.
Testimony last week during congressional hearings on the reauthorization of President Bush's education reform law focused on the need for the federal government to support states that use performance-based assessments and on the increasing frustration that parents and teachers have with high stakes testing.
"I think what politicians are hearing right now is that tests are driving the curriculum and narrowing the way kids learn, so there is a lot of pushback from parents and teachers," said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University who has studied assessment systems in dozens of states. "There's more receptivity to the possibility of a different approach to assessment than there might have been five years ago."
The Los Angeles Unified School District recently approved a plan to establish 10 small schools -- the Belmont Pilot Schools -- in the Pico-Union district that would have autonomy over staffing, budget, curriculum and assessment. The idea is modeled after a successful Boston program. The first of the 10 scheduled to open in September -- Civitas SOL, or School of Leadership -- will employ performance-based assessment. But its students will still have to take state standards-based tests.
