Authentic assessment may be conducted with an array of assessment texts and tasks that are usually informal measures developed by educators. The majority of educators across all the delivery agencies stated that they used tools developed by practitioners for initial (68 percent), on-going (72 percent), and exit assessment (51 percent). The assessment tasks require the application of knowledge or skills in contexts that reflect literacy and numeracy practices within the home, work, community, and school. Typically, authentic assessment occurs during regular classroom or tutoring activities, which means that educators can provide immediate and responsive feedback to students. Sometimes, authentic assessment materials are adopted by programs within other regions or jurisdictions.
Since authentic assessments are developed by educators, each one tends to be unique. Due to the limitations of space, only three authentic assessments used for initial assessment in different types of delivery agencies are described. The following description portrays an authentic assessment used for initial assessment of literacy skills. This comprehensive assessment is used by a college instructor, with a masters degree and more than 20 years experience in the field of adult basic education:
Our literacy assessment has four components: interview, phonics, reading, and writing. We begin with the interview, talking with the student about what brought them back to school, what goals they have, what their interests are, etc., and explaining what our program offers. The phonics assessment is very simple, just asking them to identify single consonants, consonant blends, and give the sound and a word beginning with that sound. Students are also asked to read a few consonant-vowel-consonant words, and a few silent "e" words. If the phonics assessment indicates that the student is a complete non-reader, we use a book of simple signs and ask them to tell us about what the signs are saying. Students usually find the assessment encouraging because almost everyone can identify all the letters, so everyone experiences some success with it.
For the reading portion, students are usually given a selection of several articles (e.g., from the West Coast Reader) and asked to choose one they think they can read at least some part of. After the reading we go up or down with the next article, depending on how the first reading went.