During the years that I have been writing, assessment has been the focus multiple times. One component of my assessment repertoire that continues to be elusive for many is formative assessment. The questions that frequently surface include:
Formative assessment, as defined by the Council of Chief State School Officers, is a "process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning, to improve students' achievement on intended instructional outcomes." Put succinctly, formative assessments provide information, often informal, for both teacher and students about how learning is progressing; concurrently, it informs the teacher about whether instruction is working and whether true learning is being formed.
Formative assessments give teachers the opportunity to provide feedback to students so they can use the data to make corrections or adjustments in their work. Formative assessments let teachers and students know how learning is progressing; summative assessments, on the other hand, are periodically administered to determine what knowledge students have learned or what skills they have mastered. Dr. James Popham, a UCLA professor and a proponent of the proper use of formative assessment, has said, "Whereas formative assessment intends to improve ongoing assessment, summative assessment tries to answer the question, was instruction effective?" Rick Stiggins distinguishes between assessment for learning (formative) and assessment of learning (summative). Both practices are essential, but many educators still do not use formative assessment data properly. Any assessment can be either formative or summative; the category into which it falls is determined by how the information is used.
In 1998, British researchers Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published an extensive review of classroom assessment practices and concluded that, when properly applied, formative assessment had a significant impact on student learning. In their meta-analysis, they found that gains in learning through the use of formative assessments are "among the largest ever reported for educational interventions." As their work received increased public attention, dialogue in schools also increased as educators contemplated how their current practice compared to the research findings.
There are many justifications for changing how we assess student progress. Currently, in many grade books, there is a hodgepodge of marks including grades for homework, behavior, participation, attendance, pop quizzes, tardies, and group work, mixed in with grades for tests, projects, performance tasks, presentations, essays, book reports, and self-assessments. When determining a report card grade, some teachers combine all of these measures, often weighting different data sources and then averaging everything together, and come up with a letter grade. Unless there are faculty discussions about assessment practices that lead to some uniformity, each staff member can have a personal and unique system for determining what a specific grade signifies. Hence, grades on report cards vary from teacher to teacher and tell us little about what students have actually learned.
Current work in the field provides much greater insight into how we should monitor and report student achievement. Many researchers and writers have concluded that a student's grade should be based on the student's demonstration of mastery of the learning standards; more precisely, performance on summative assessments should determine a final quarter or annual grade. Formative assessments should be thought of as steps in the learning process. This formative data should be used to provide feedback to students, allow students to adjust their learning strategies, and inform teachers as to how they can adjust instruction. It is much like when an athlete or musician learns a new technique: they do not use it instantly in a performance or competition. Instead, the coach observes the student using the new technique and provides suggestions for improvement until the student demonstrates competence. In the same vein, our students should complete self-assessments on work in progress, comparing their current proficiency with a published rubric or a clearly delineated standard. Practices such as giving a pop quiz, collecting and grading papers, and returning the work with a single letter grade on top should be eliminated. Using formative assessment data to provide opportunities for growth makes much more sense if student improvement and learning is the ultimate goal.
From the time students walk in the door, formative assessment is available. Every comment, look, and move provides data about the learners and their learning. Wise teachers are continuously gathering and using that data, and are purposeful in orchestrating tasks and interactions that let them know if instruction is working. As University of Virginia Professor Carol Ann Tomlinson has written, "We need to understand where our students are at any point during a unit; in other words, what each student knows, understands, and can do at a given time based on the content goals we've established." Finding out where each student stands does not have to be complex or time consuming.
Any interaction between teacher and student can be considered a formative assessment. These interactions may be oral or written, formal or informal. There are dozens of formative assessment strategies. A few possibilities are:
None of these assessments are graded; they simply provide important data as learning is taking place. When teachers use formative assessments to analyze students' day-to-day performance and the effectiveness of the instructional program, the results on summative assessments should be predictable. As Education Week blogger David Ginsburg puts it, "Formative assessment efficiency on the part of teachers is the key to summative assessment proficiency on the part of students."