The fine arts are all fun and games until your creations are valued and assessed. If your passion is art, writing, choir or even instrumental music, the high school offers classes specializing in all of these different forms of creativity. Having a passion for art and being able to express yourself and your creativity at school is a gift, however teachers are forced to evaluate their students, therefore students are assigned a letter grade and percentage connected to their passion and work. This evaluation can be very intimidating and diminishing.
Putting a grade on creativity is difficult. Any art form is personal and important to those who make it, so assigning a percentage to that piece of work is hard and risky. The difficulty arises in balancing fairness while ensuring the student feels seen and valued for their hard work and creativity. However, to bring out the best in each student and push towards greatness, feedback is required. Art, vocal music and instrumental music teachers at the high school have various and creative ways of approaching these end-of-year art evaluations and exams. Some options include a performance-based test, a written exam, or even an evaluation on your work ethic throughout the exam. The options to both push students while supporting them in their creativity are unfortunately limited, but teachers are implementing a variety of tactics to solve this dilemma.
Choir director Jack Phillipson believes in the importance of assessing his students’ not only on performance but also preparedness. He approaches these exams by creating a collaborative environment where a student has choice and independence and the ability to lead.
“Final exams for most of the choir students is a small group performance or a solo, it’s very student-driven from song choice, to practice strategies, to arranging it with the people in your group and figuring out how you’re going to share that performance,” Phillipson said. “Finding a karaoke track or accompaniment that’s going to work for the style that you’re going for, choosing the performance date, it’s all very student-directed.”
Phillipson knows that natural talent will vary in each student’s performances and finds it important to take this into account when assessing.
“I have different expectations based on the level of experience that a student will bring, and the level of success they’ve already had in music,” Phillipson said.
When it comes to scoring these performances you have to be fair and equal to all students and use a rubric that applies to each performance, Phillipson uses a rubric from the Michigan School Vocal Music Association (MSVMA) to score the students. The rubric scores on tone, quality, pitch, rhythm, diction, interpretation and presentation.
As Phillipson scores these performances, he does not let the rubric overshadow the parts of performance he finds most important. He bases his scores on the student’s ability to be professional and perform to their best effort.
“I don’t really adhere to a talent-based music vision. I just don’t think that it has that much to do with whether someone can be successful in music specifically,” Phillipson said. “I always grade first on work ethic and effort. If you are really working hard to improve yourself and your performance, I try to see through whether you’re singing all the notes right. I try to see through whether you’ve had a musical family your whole life.”
Another way to evaluate students is not based on their performance at all, but to focus on growth throughout the year rather than a final product or performance.
“Students are expected to recognize their own previous successes, create a goal for themselves, and then I’m grading them on their ability to achieve the goal they set, rather than me setting an arbitrary goal for what is an A in music,” Phillipson said.
High school art teacher Tanya Lockwood approaches final exams in a different way, she utilizes written and art based assessments.
“For tests, it’s all based on vocabulary, for projects, it’s based on the performance of understanding and mastery of the concepts, final exams are just a reiteration of projects,” Lockwood said.
In Lockwood’s art classes the assessments consist of understanding concepts and the ability to perform and follow directions, as well as art vocabulary knowledge. To prevent bias, Lockwood tries her best to only judge based on the ability to follow instructions and grasp concepts.
“If you take away the artistic skill, because that can be very subjective, and if you have it based on the ability to show mastery of the concept, you can judge somebody’s artistic skill,” Lockwood said.
High school band teacher Greg Wells does not always see music as subjective, but rather as something that can have a point value assigned to it. He can assess students with a written exam as well as an evaluation based on their performance.
“Our grade book is set up as a point system grade book. So whatever I do, I have to then assess that and somehow quantify it into a point value,” Wells said. “In terms of formatting, it depends if it’s written, if it’s performance-based, or if it’s a compositional thing, where they perform it, or if it’s presentation-based. All of those are avenues of assessments that I use at the end.”
Wells took a whole class on assessment measurement. He uses a rubric that scores based on mistakes made, rhythm, note accuracy and tone. These categories are then scored on a scale from 1-5 and then put into a cumulative score that is then entered in the gradebook. He can also test on music theory, which contains questions regarding note names on a staff, naming scales, key signatures. Allowing students to be assessed in a more formal manner, although it does diminish the creativity piece.
When it comes to balancing education with the art of music, Wells sees it as teaching his students to strive to be excellent people and not just focus on the music.
“I think art is a means of teaching human beings to be amazing,” Wells said. “I think when done well, all the subjects are doing that. We’re trying to make a better world, a better society, better people, and better humans.”
In order to balance not only the world of art and evaluation, but also continue to encourage and nurture student creativity, educators must get creative. They must assess art subjectively and also formatively. This will ensure fairness and allow students to feel valued for their work, and able to continue with their passions with confidence and support.
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