Self assessment is perhaps the most powerful kind of assessment, for it gives students a greater responsibility for their own learning. Through self assessment students become independent learners, capable of setting their own goals. Self assessment may include:

• Reflective Questions - Two or three questions posed by the teacher which compel students to examine where they are going in their own work and how they plan to get there.
• Checklist - Teachers and/or students generate a checklist of items to be considered or accomplished in a given art activity. During the art making process, students refer to the checklist as a point of reference.
• Chart, Table, Graph - Teachers and/or students devise a chart, table or graph on which they show the degree to which they accomplish the various aspects or dimensions of an extended art activity.
• Journals, Sketchbooks - Journal writing and keeping sketchbooks allow students to reflect on their growth over a period of time.

    Students learn to assess the work of other students objectively. They get insights into their own work through this structured exchange. Peer assessment may include:

• Class Critiques - Students use the language of art criticism to describe and analyze the work of other students.
• Interview - Students interview other students in order to gain insight into their own and others’ work. Questions asked in the interviews are planned by teacher and/or students.
• Presentation - Students present to the class a work of art, a report on an artist, or some other research. The students who comprise the audience develop a structured way to assess that presentation.
• One-on-one or small group critiques - Students are assigned to the work station of another student to look at, assess, and discuss, a completed work of art or a body of work. A variation is to set up a group of three or four students and ask each student to present his/her work. Others in the group ask questions and make written comments about the work. Comments are then shared and discussed.

    Teachers participate and guide the assessment so that it contributes to student learning.

• Student-Teacher Conference - The teacher meets with a student to review material in the student’s portfolio. The teacher assesses how well the student is meeting the outcomes of the program and how well the student is able to set his/her own goals and achieve them.
• Checklist, Chart, Table, Graph - Teachers assess student progress by checking the levels that students have achieved on various self assessment tools. Students thus see the degree of correspondence between their self-assessment and the teachers’ assessment of their work.
• Reports - Occasionally during the school year, teachers write a progress report of individual students’ work.
• Cumulative Reports - Teachers write cumulative reports for students at the end of elementary, intermediate, and commencement levels. This cumulative report becomes part of the student’s record and moves on with the student to the next level.

    Parent’s Night - Parents/guardians of the students can be integral to the assessment process.

• At a Parents’ Night, parents/guardians review a description of the expectations of individual art activities in their student"s portfolio. Formally or informally, parents/guardians may be asked to comment on the level to which they believe the student met those expectations.
• Parent Assessment Form - Parents/guardians are encouraged to discuss the portfolio contents, quality of the work, student’s written reports and self assessments, journal and sketchbook entries with their student to respond to items on an assessment form, and to return the form to the teacher. This approach allows them to be more informed about the goals of the program and to participate in their student’s achievement of those goals.

    Community assessment may include:

• Community Exhibit - Exhibiting student work in the school or other community venue provides an opportunity for the community-at-large to participate in assessing student accomplishments. Such assessment is usually informal, but a more formal response can be encouraged. A description of the assignment, or the visual problem the students had to solve, or the research the students completed, can be included with the work. Making forms available on which community members share their responses toward student work, gives many more persons a role in student assessment.