A Classroom Assessment System

Today, more teachers are thinking about assessment in their classrooms as a balanced system of components. One component, summative assessment, fulfills the traditional role of measuring student progress. Results from tests feed into an evaluation, like a mark in a grade book or a report card grade. Also known as assessments of learning, they reflect the level of student learning at a particular point in time.

Figure with magnifying glassAnother component, formative assessment, is an ongoing process used to inform instructional decisions made by the teacher and student. This process can be extended to encourage and promote further learning. Formative assessments, linked to the targets of daily instruction, provide continuous information—what Margaret Heritage, assistant director for professional development at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA, calls a "video stream"—as opposed to a summative snapshot.

Formative assessment happens while teaching is still underway, helping shape decisions about what needs to happen next to better prepare students for the summative assessment.

In a balanced classroom assessment system, neither of these two components is over- or under-used; they work together to generate the combined effects that are greater than the sum of the individual parts. When summative and formative classroom assessments are high quality and purposefully planned, they are synergistic parts of the same system and can help form a more complete and accurate picture of student learning.

We should point out that it isn't really the assessment itself that's formative or summative. We see plenty of products in the K–12 market advertised as "formative assessments," giving the false sense that what is formative is the instrument itself. It's really how the results of any assessment are used that determines the label to apply.

The purpose of the assessment may be to give students ungraded practice, help them see where they might improve, or inform teachers how they might adapt instruction to help get students to the target. Those are all formative purposes. If the purpose is summative, with an accountability end in mind, the results are used differently, perhaps to assign a grade, as an indicator of student proficiency, or to inform a decision about student placement.
Why Balanced Assessment?

Beyond the commonsense appeal of balance, we advocate both balance and thoughtful attention to formative applications of classroom assessment because clear evidence describes the positive impact formative assessment practices can have on student engagement and learning.

A growing body of research shows that formative assessment does improve learning when students understand the intended learning and the assessment criteria, when feedback to students is accurate and descriptive, and, most importantly, when students are actively involved with their own assessment.

An extension of formative assessment, beyond providing the teacher with useful information, brings the student into the equation as an important user of assessment results. This is assessment for learning, in which students are intentionally involved in the entire assessment process.