Model Cornerstone Assessments

Along with the standards themselves (unifying anchor standards and grade by grade discipline specific performance standards) instructional resources are provided to support teachers as they build understanding about the new standards and consider multiple ways to implement the standards in their classrooms. The instructional resources include: enduring understandings and essential questions; process components; glossaries; and model cornerstone assessments.

Model Cornerstone Assessments are sample units of instruction with embedded assessment which have been designed and piloted for each discipline in every grade level. The concept of model cornerstone assessments has been adopted with permission from the work of Jay McTighe (2011), who was a consultant to the work of creating the standards.

Unlike externally-developed standardized tests that interrupt instruction occasionally, cornerstone assessments are curriculum-embedded. They are intended to engage students in applying knowledge and skills in authentic and relevant contexts. Cornerstone tasks serve as more than just a means of gathering assessment evidence. These tasks are, by design, “worth teaching to” because they embody valuable learning goals and worthy accomplishments.

The standards were built with the expectation that schools or districts will value the understanding and transfer of knowledge and skills that will come with a standards-based curriculum in the arts and therefore, acknowledge that they are important curricular goals. Moreover, NCCAS hopes that the inclusion of cornerstone assessments in this project will focus the great majority of classroom- and district-level assessments around rich performance tasks that demand transfer. These assessments also provide the basis for collecting the benchmark student work that illustrates the nature and quality of student achievement envisioned in the standards.

Dance Model Cornerstone Assessments:

Media Arts Model Cornerstone Assessments: