ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some definitions, highlight theory and research, and offer some thoughts and opinions. Alternative assessment strategies have emerged as a key element of the school restructuring movement. The key to understanding the alternative assessment movement is found in a thoughtful consideration of the term authentic assessment. The alternative assessment movement is obviously based on two related arguments, one that deals with curriculum and the other with assessment. Assessment literacy involves increasingly sophisticated technical procedures used at all levels to determine whether learning has occurred. Richard Stiggins, a prolific author and theorist in this area, repeatedly emphasized the essence of the issue in his insightful terminology assessment for learning, not assessment of learning. National reform policies, for example, incorporate assumptions about school and district leadership that are very much at odds with the research. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RttT) call for market-based strategies choice, charters, merit incentives to drive improvement.
