Assessment Policy

ACS Athens students are challenged to become architects of their own learning who reach their unique potential – academically, intellectually, socially and ethically – to thrive as responsible global citizens. The school’s approach to assessment is designed to support these elements of the school’s vision and mission.

ACS Athens faculty and administration believe that assessment is formative and summative and seeks to:

1. Discover and enhance students’ knowledge, attitudes towards learning, understandings and abilities;

2. Inform, improve and facilitate teaching and learning;

3. Inspire students to reach their full potential.

At ACS Athens, our goals for assessment include the following:

1. To provide purposeful, meaningful and useful feedback to students about strengths, weaknesses and observed potential in the process of learning;

2. To evaluate final student performance against clearly stated standards of quality;

3. To guide instruction, and as a spur to further learning;

4. To inform students, parents and the professional staff of individual and group/school achievement and progress;

5. To measure the success of programmatic/curricular initiatives and to guide the development of new programs;

6. To ensure that learning is aligned with standards.

ACS Athens faculty and administration are committed to implementing assessment practices that exhibit the following characteristics:

• holistic

• authentic

• flexible

• meaningful

• a product of/allows for student choice

• encouraging of self-reflection and peer review

• differentiated to account for learning differences

• contextual

• ethical

• reliable and fair

• aligned with clearly articulated curriculum standards

• engage students in intellectual activities of analysis, synthesis and evaluation in addition to recall of knowledge

• encourage creativity

• draw upon individual and collaborative student effort; independent and guided learning experiences; and classroom, on-line and fieldwork study (i2flex)

• promote problem-solving, project-based, inquiry-fueled learning

• take a wide variety of forms in a wide variety of media and performance modes

• encourage reflection and revision

• inspiring

ACS Athens faculty and administration are committed to developing an assessment program that values the most accurate demonstration of student performance over the averaging of grades in a reporting period.

Faculty is currently engaged in documenting assessment practices, and creating a bank of departmental assessment rubrics, as part of our work (grades JK-12) to create a portfolio of teaching strategies and practices that promote students’ learning in all aspects of the Learner Profile/ACS Portrait of a Graduate, and which represent research-based best practices in constructivist, inquiry-based teaching and learning.