Some of the current thinking on assessment (Wiggins and others) is that effort, attendance, class participation and other non-achievement based criteria should not be included in final calculation of a students grade for a course. While I completely agree, this may be a sticky issue in courses like art, theater, or music where performance is a critical part of course content. At the last Fine Arts department meeting there was a very brief mention of this issue as ASB is reevaluting its assessment policies. We tabled further discussion until next year. However, I believe that the assessment criteria we use in the upper and middle school art courses may present a solution.

Borrowing an idea from the Everett Public School district in Washington State, we have included "Creative Process" as one of the assessment categories on our project's rubrics. While the specific criteria for this category may vary from project to project, in general it includes showing persistence, refining work based on feedback, planning and experimenting, and arriving at unique and personal visual solutions. These criteria echo the "Studio Habits of Mind" coming out of Harvard's Project Zero which help to define how an artist thinks and approaches their work.

I think it is legitimate to teach artistic thinking and behavior in art courses and assess whether or not a student is using those behaviors in the pursuit of their art production. While it is not legitimate to include “effort” in a final course assessment, it would be difficult for a student to use these behaviors without conscious effort. As long as these behaviors are clearly articulated to students I feel it is legitimate to include an evaluation of them in a final assessment

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