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Summative Assessment Process, Product, Examples

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Summative Assessment Process, Product, Examples

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This article discusses the differences between summative and formative assessment, the process and product, the benefits, and examples that can be used in the classroom.

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When gauging student learning, two approaches likely come to mind: a formative or summative assessment.

Fortunately, feeling pressure to choose one or the other isn't necessary. These two types of learning assessment actually serve different and necessary purposes.

Definitions: What's the difference between formative and summative assessment?

Formative assessment occurs regularly throughout a unit, chapter, or term to help track not only how student learning is improving, but how your teaching can, too.

According to a WestEd article, teachers love using various formative assessments because they help meet students' individual learning needs and foster an environment for ongoing feedback.

Take one-minute papers, for example. Giving your students a solo writing task about today's lesson can help you see how well students understand new content.

Catching these struggles or learning gaps immediately is better than finding out during a summative assessment.

Such an assessment could include:

In-lesson polls

Partner quizzes

Self-evaluations

Ed-tech games

One-minute papers

Visuals (e.g., diagrams, charts or maps) to demonstrate learning

Exit tickets

So, what is a summative assessment?
Credit: Alberto G.
It occurs at the end of a unit, chapter, or term and is most commonly associated with final projects, standardized tests, or district benchmarks.

Typically heavily weighted and graded, it evaluates what a student has learned and how much they understand.

There are various types of summative assessment. Here are some common examples of summative assessment in practice:

End-of-unit test

End-of-chapter test

Achievement tests

Standardized tests

Final projects or portfolios

Teachers and administrators use the final result to assess student progress, and to evaluate schools and districts. For teachers, this could mean changing how you teach a certain unit or chapter. For administrators, this data could help clarify which programs (if any) require tweaking or removal.

The differences between formative and summative assessment

While we just defined the two, there are five key differences between formative and summative assessments requiring a more in-depth explanation.
Formative assessment:

1. Occurs through a chapter or unit

2. Improves how students learn

3. Covers small content areas

4. Monitors how students are learning

5. Focuses on the process of student learning

Summative assessment:

1. Occurs at the end of a chapter or unit

2. Evaluates what students learn

3. Covers complete content areas

4. Assigns a grade to students' understanding

5. Emphasizes the product of student learning

During vs after

Teachers use formative assessment at many points during a unit or chapter to help guide student learning.

Summative assessment comes in after completing a content area to gauge student understanding.

Improving vs evaluating

If anyone knows how much the learning process is a constant work in progress, it's you! This is why formative assessment is so helpful - it won't always guarantee students understand concepts, but it will improve how they learn.

Summative assessment, on the other hand, simply evaluates what they've learned. In her book, Balanced Assessment: From Formative to Summative, renowned educator Kay Burke writes, "The only feedback comes in the form of a letter grade, percentage grade, pass/fail grade, or label such as 'exceeds standards' or 'needs improvement.'"

Little vs large

Let's say chapter one in the math textbook has three subchapters (i.e., 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). A teacher conducting formative assessments will assign mini tasks or assignments throughout each individual content area.

Whereas, if you'd like an idea of how your class understood the complete chapter, you'd give them a test covering a large content area including all three parts.

Monitoring vs grading

Formative assessment is extremely effective as a means to monitor individual students' learning styles. It helps catch problems early, giving you more time to address and adapt to different problem areas.

Summative assessments are used to evaluate and grade students' overall understanding of what you've taught. Think report card comments: did students achieve the learning goal(s) you set for them or not?

Process vs product

"It's not about the destination; it's about the journey"? This age-old saying sums up formative and summative assessments fairly accurately.

The former focuses on the process of student learning. You'll use it to identify areas of strength and weakness among your students - and to make necessary changes to accommodate their learning needs.

The latter emphasizes the product of student learning. To discover the product's "value", you can ask yourself questions, such as: At the end of an instructional unit, did the student's grade exceed the class standard, or pass according to a district's benchmark?

In other words, formative methods are an assessment for learning whereas summative ones are an assessment of learning.

Now that you've got a more thorough understanding of these evaluations, let's dive into the love-hate relationship teachers like yourself may have with summative assessments.

Perceived disadvantages of summative assessment

The pros are plenty. However, before getting to that list, let's outline some of its perceived cons. Summative assessment may:

1) Offer minimal room for creativity

Rigid and strict assignments or tests can lead to a regurgitation of information. Some students may be able to rewrite facts from one page to another, but others need to understand the "why" before giving an answer.

2) Not accurately reflect learning

"Teaching to the test" refers to educators who dedicate more time teaching lessons that will be emphasized on district-specific tests.

A survey conducted by Harvard's Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism asked teachers whether or not "preparing students to pass mandated standardized tests" affects their teaching.

A significant 60% said it either "dictates most of" or "substantially affects" their teaching. While this can result in higher scores, curriculum distortion can prevent students from learning other foundational subject areas.

3) Ignore (and miss) timely learning needs

Because summative assessment occurs at the end of units or terms, teachers can fail to identify and remedy students' knowledge gaps or misconceptions as they arise.

Unfortunately, by this point, there's often little or no time to rectify a student's mark, which can affect them in subsequent units or grades.

4) Result in a lack of motivation

The University of London's Evidence for Policy and Practice conducted a 19-study systematic review of the impact summative assessment and tests have on students' motivation for learning.

Contrary to popular belief, researchers found a correlation between students who scored poorly on national curriculum tests and experienced lower self-esteem, and an unwillingness to put more effort into future test prep. Beforehand, interestingly, "there was no correlation between self-esteem and achievement."

For some students, summative assessment can sometimes be seen as 'high stakes' testing due to the pressure on them to perform well. That said, 'low-stakes' assessments can also be used in the form of quizzes or practice tests.

5) Be inauthentic

Summative assessment has received criticism for its perceived inaccuracy in providing a full and balanced measure of student learning.

Consider this, for example: Your student, who's a hands-on, auditory learner, has a math test today. It comes in a traditional paper format as well as a computer program format, which reads the questions aloud for students.

Chances are the student will opt for the latter test format. What's more, this student's test results will likely be higher and more accurate.

The reality is that curricula - let alone standardized tests - typically don't allow for this kind of accommodation. This is the exact reason educators and advocates such as Chuck Hitchcock, Anne Meyer, David Rose, and Richard Jackson believe:

6) Be biased

Depending on a school district's demographic, summative assessment - including standardized tests - can present biases if a group of students is unfairly graded based on their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or social class.

In his presentation at Kansas State University, emeritus professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Dr. W. James Popham, explained summative assessment bias:

Importance and benefits of summative assessment

Overall, these are valid points raised against summative assessment. However, it does offer fantastic benefits for teachers and students alike!

Summative assessment can:

1) Motivate students to study and pay closer attention

Although we mentioned lack of motivation above, this isn't true for every student. In fact, you've probably encountered numerous students for whom summative assessments are an incredible source of motivation to put more effort into their studies.

For example, final exams are a common type of summative assessment that students may encounter at the end of a semester or school year. This pivotal moment gives students a milestone to achieve and a chance to demonstrate their knowledge.

In May 2017, the College Board released a statement about whether coaching truly boosts test scores:

2) Allow students to apply what they've learned

It's one thing to memorize multiplication tables (which is a good skill), but another to apply those skills in math word problems or real-world examples.

Summative assessments - excluding, for example, multiple choice tests - help you see which students can retain and apply what they've learned.

3) Help identify gaps in student learning

Before moving on to a new unit, it's vital to make sure students are keeping up. Naturally, some will be ahead while others will lag behind. In either case, giving them a summative assessment will provide you with a general overview of where your class stands as a whole.

Let's say your class just wrote a test on multiplication and division. If all students scored high on multiplication but one quarter of students scored low on division, you'll know to focus more on teaching division to those students moving forward.

4) Help identify possible teaching gaps
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In addition to identifying student learning gaps, summative assessment can help target where your teaching style or lesson plans may have missed the mark.

Have you ever been grading tests before, to your horror, realizing almost none of your students hit the benchmark you hoped for? When this happens, the low grades are not necessarily related to study time.

For example, you may need to adjust your teaching methods by:

Including/excluding word problems

Incorporating more visual components

Innovative summative assessments (we list some below!)

5) Give teachers valuable insights
Credit: Kevin Jarrett
Summative assessments can highlight what worked and what didn't throughout the school year. Once you pinpoint how, where and what lessons need tweaking, making informed adjustments for next year becomes easier.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes... and, for teachers, new students year after year. So although old students may miss out on changes you've made to your lessons, new ones get to reap the benefits.

This not only improves your skills as an educator, but will ensure a more enriching educational experience for generations of students to come.

6) Contribute positively to learning outcomes

Certain summative assessments also provide valuable data at district, national, and global levels. Depending on average test scores, this can determine whether or not certain schools receive funding, programs stay or go, curriculum changes occur, and more. Burke writes:

The seven aims of summative assessment

Dr. Nancy P. Gallavan, a professor of teacher education at the University of Central Arkansas, believes teachers can use performance-based summative assessments at any grade level.

However, in an article for Corwin, she suggests crafting yours with seven aims in mind:

1. Accompanied with appropriate time and task management

2. Achievable as in-class activities and out-of-class assignments

3. Active involvement in planning, preparation, and performance

4. Applicable to academic standards and expectations

5. Appropriate to your students' learning styles, needs, and interests

6. Attractive to your students on an individual and group level

7. Authentic to curricular content and context

Ideally, the assessment method should also measure a student's performance accurately against the learning objectives set at the beginning of the course.

Keeping these goals in mind, here's a list of innovative ways to conduct summative assessments in your classroom!

Summative assessment examples: 9 ways to make test time fun

If you want to switch things up this summative assessment season, keep reading. While you can't change what's on standardized tests, you can create activities to ensure your students are exhibiting and applying their understanding and skills to end-of-chapter or -unit assessments. In a refreshing way.

Why not give them the opportunity to express their understanding in ways that apply to different learning styles?
Note: As a general guideline, students should incorporate recognition and recall, logic and reasoning, as well as skills and application that cover major concepts and practices (including content areas you emphasized in your lessons).
1) One, two, three... action!

Write a script and create a short play, movie, or song about a concept or strategy of your choosing.

This video from Science Rap Academy is a great - and advanced - example of students who created a song about how blue-eyed children can come from two brown-eyed parents:

2) TXT MSG

Using a tool such as iPhone Fake Text Generator, have students craft a mock text message conversation conveying a complex concept from the unit, or each chapter of that unit.

Students could create a back-and-forth conversation between two historical figures about a world event, or two friends helping each other with complex math concepts.

3) Podcast

Have your students create a five to 10-minute podcast episode about core concepts from each unit. This is an exciting option because it can become an ongoing project.

Individually or in groups, specific students can be in charge of each end-of-chapter or -unit podcast. If your students have a cumulative test towards the end of the year or term, the podcast can even function as a study tool they created together.
Credit :Brad Flickinger
You can use online tools such as Record MP3 Online or Vocaroo to get your class started!

4) Infographic

Creating a detailed infographic for a final project is an effective way for students to reinforce what they've learned. They can cover definitions, key facts, statistics, research, how-to info, graphics, etc.

You can even put up the most impressive infographics in your classroom. Over time, you'll have an arsenal of in-depth, visually-appealing infographics students can use when studying for chapter or unit tests.

5) Compare and contrast

Venn diagrams are an old - yet effective - tool perfect for visualizing just about anything! Whether you teach history or social studies, English or math, or something in between, Venn diagrams can help certain learners visualize the relationship between different things.

For example, they can compare book characters, locations around the world, scientific concepts, and more just like the examples below:

6) Living museum

This creative summative assessment is similar to one, two, three... action! Individuals will plan and prepare an exhibit (concept) in the Living Museum (classroom). Let's say the unit your class just completed covered five core concepts.

Five students will set up around the classroom while the teacher walks from exhibit to exhibit. Upon reaching the first student, the teacher will push an imaginary button, bringing the exhibit "to life." The student will do a two to three-minute presentation; afterwards, the teacher will move on to the next one.

7) Ed-Tech games

Now more than ever, students are growing up saturated with smartphones, tablets, and video games. That's why educators should show students how to use technology in the classroom effectively and productively.

More and more educators are bringing digital tools into the learning process. Pew Research Center surveyed 2,462 teachers and reported that digital technologies have helped in teaching their middle and high school students.

Some of the findings were quite eye-opening:

80% report using the internet at least weekly to help them create lesson plans

84% report using the internet at least weekly to find content that will engage students

69% say the internet has a "major impact on their ability to share ideas with other teachers

80% report getting email alerts or updates at least weekly that allow them to follow developments in their field

92% say the internet has a "major impact" on their ability to access content, resources, and materials for their teaching

67% say the internet has a "major impact" on their ability to interact with parents and 57% say it has had such an impact on enabling their interaction with students

To make the most of EdTech, find a tool that actually engages your students in learning and gives you the insightful data and reports you need to adjust your instruction

With Prodigy Math, you can:

Start using Prodigy

8) Shark Tank/Dragon's Den

Yes, just like the reality TV show! You can show an episode or two to your class or get them to watch the show at home. Next, have students pitch a product or invention that can help change the world outside of school for the better.

This innovative summative assessment is one that'll definitely require some more thought and creativity. But it's important that, as educators, we help students realize they can have a huge positive impact on the world in which they live.

9) Free choice

If a student chooses to come up with their own summative assessment, you'll need to vet it first. It'll likely take some collaboration to arrive at something sufficient.

However, giving students the freedom to explore content areas that interest them most could surprise you. Sometimes, it's during those projects they form a newfound passion and are wildly successful in completing the task.

We're sure there are countless other innovative summative assessment ideas out there, but we hope this list gets your creative juices flowing.

With the exclusion of standardized state and national tests, one of the greatest misconceptions about summative assessments is that they're all about paper and pencil. Our hope in creating this list was to help you see how fun and engaging summative assessments can truly be.

10) Group projects

Group projects aren't just a fun way to break the monotony, but a dynamic and interactive form of summative assessment. Here's why:

Collaborative learning: Group projects encourage students to work as a team, fostering their communication and collaboration skills. They learn to listen, negotiate, and empathize, which are crucial skills in and beyond the classroom.

Promotes critical thinking: When students interact with each other, they get to explore different perspectives. They challenge each other's understanding, leading to stimulating debates and problem-solving sessions that boost critical thinking.

In-depth assessment: Group projects offer teachers a unique lens to evaluate both individual performances and group dynamics. It's like getting a sneak peek into their world - you get to see how they perform under different circumstances and how they interact with each other.

Catering to different learning styles: Given the interactive nature of group projects, they can cater to different learning styles - auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Every student gets a chance to shine!

However, it's important to set clear instructions and criteria to ensure fairness. Remember, it's not just about the final product - it's about the process too.

Some interesting examples of group projects include:

Create a Mini Documentary: Students could work together to research a historical event and create a mini documentary presenting their findings.

Plan a Community Service Project: This could involve identifying a problem in the local community and creating a detailed plan to address it.

Design a Mobile App: For a more tech-focused project, students could identify a problem and design an app that solves it.

Summative assessment strategies for keeping tests clear and fair
Credit: woodleywonderworks
In addition to using the summative assessment examples above to accommodate your students' learning styles, these tips and strategies should also help:

Use a rubric - Rubrics help set a standard for how your class should perform on a test or assignment. They outline test length, how in-depth it will be, and what you require of them to achieve the highest possible grades.

Design clear, effective questions - When designing tests, do your best to use language, phrases, and examples similar to those used during lessons. This'll help keep your tests aligned with the material you've covered.

Try blind grading - Most teachers prefer knowing whose tests they're grading. But if you want to provide wholly unbiased grades and feedback, try blind grading. You can request your students write their names on the bottom of the last test page or the back.

Assess comprehensiveness - Make sure the broad, overarching connections you're hoping students can make are reasonable and fluid. For example, if the test covers measurement, geometry and spatial sense, you should avoid including questions about patterning and algebra.

Create a final test after, not before, teaching the lessons - Don't put the horse before the carriage. Plans can change and student learning can demand different emphases from year to year. If you have a test outline, perfect! But expect to embrace and make some changes from time to time.

Make it real-world relevant - How many times have you heard students ask, "When am I going to use this in real life?" Far too often students assume math, for example, is irrelevant to their lives and write it off as a subject they don't need. When crafting test questions, use culturally-relevant word problems to illustrate a subject's true relevance.

Enter the Balanced Assessment Model

Throughout your teaching career, you'll spend a lot of time with formative and summative assessments. While some teachers emphasize one over the other, it's vital to recognize the extent to which they're interconnected.

In the book Classroom Assessment for Student Learning, Richard Stiggins, one of the first educators to advocate for the concept of assessment for learning, proposes something called "a balanced assessment system that takes advantage of assessment of learning and assessment for learning."

If you use both effectively, they inform one another and "assessment becomes more than just an index of school success. It also serves as the cause of that success."

In fact, Stiggins argues teachers should view these two types of assessment as "in sync."

Conclusion: Going beyond the test

Implementing these innovative summative assessment examples should engage your students in new and exciting ways.

What's more, they'll have the opportunity to express and apply what they've learned in creative ways that solidify student learning.

So, what do you think - are you ready to try out these summative assessment ideas? Prodigy is a game-based learning platform teachers use to keep their students engaged.

Sign up for a free teacher account and set an Assessment today!

Such an assessment could include:
Credit: Alberto G.

Formative assessment: Summative assessment:

Repeated practice tests reinforce the low self-image of the lower-achieving students... When test scores are a source or pride and the community, pressure is brought to bear on the school for high scores.

Similarly, parents bring pressure on their children when the result has consequences for attendance at high social status schools. For many students, this increases their anxiety, even though they recognize their parents as being supportive.

Curriculum matters and 'fixing' the one-size-fits-all, inflexible curriculum will occupy both special and general educators well into the future... Students with diverse learning needs are not 'the problem'; barriers in the curriculum itself are the root of the difficulty.

This doesn't necessarily mean that if minority students are outperformed on a summative test by majority students that the test is biased against that minority. It may instead indicate that the minority students have not been provided with the appropriate instruction...

An example of content bias against girls would be one in which students are asked to compare the weights of several objects, including a football. Since girls are less likely to have handled a football, they might find the item more difficult than boys, even though they have mastered the concept measured by the item.

Summative assessment can:

Data shows studying for the SAT for 20 hours on free Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy is associated with an average score gain of 115 points, nearly double the average score gain compared to students who don't use Khan Academy. Out of nearly 250,000 test-takers studied, more than 16,000 gained 200 points or more between the PSAT/NMSQT and SAT...

In addition to the 115-point average score increase associated with 20 hours of practice, shorter practice periods also correlate with meaningful score gains. For example, 6 to 8 hours of practice on Official SAT Practice is associated with an average 90-point increase.

Credit: woodleywonderworks Credit: Kevin Jarrett

Summative assessments also provide the public and policymakers with a sense of the results of their investment in education and give educators a forum for proving whether instruction works - or does not work.

Credit :Brad Flickinger

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Credit: woodleywonderworks

They can even be the exact same thing - only the purpose and the timing of the assessment determine its label. Formative assessments provide the training wheels that allow students to practice and gain confidence while riding their bikes around the enclosed school parking lot.

Once the training wheels come off, the students face their summative assessment as they ride off into the sunset on only two wheels, prepared to navigate the twists and turns of the road to arrive safely at their final destination.

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10 Summative Assessment Examples to Try This School Year

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All Posts When gauging student learning, two approaches likely come to mind: a formative or summative assessment. Fortunately, feeling pressure to choose one or the other isn't necessary. These two types of learning assessment actually serve different and necessary purposes.

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What Does the Research Say About Testing?

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What Does the Research Say About Testing?

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The article explains that when used in an effective way, tests can be helpful for students retention and recall.

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For many teachers, the image of students sitting in silence filling out bubbles, computing mathematical equations, or writing timed essays causes an intensely negative reaction.

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 and its 2015 update, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), every third through eighth grader in U.S. public schools now takes tests calibrated to state standards, with the aggregate results made public. In a study of the nation's largest urban school districts, students took an average of 112 standardized tests between pre-K and grade 12.

But educators shouldn't give up on traditional classroom tests so quickly. Research has found that tests can be valuable tools to help students learn, if designed and administered with format, timing, and content in mind-and a clear purpose to improve student learning.

Not All Tests Are Bad

But to reduce anxiety and stereotype threat-the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype about a group that one belongs to-retrieval-type practice tests also need to be low-stakes (with minor to no grades) and administered up to three times before a final summative effort to be most effective.

Timing also matters. Students are able to do fine on high-stakes assessment tests if they take them shortly after they study. But a week or more after studying, students retain much less information and will do much worse on major assessments-especially if they've had no practice tests in between.

Short, low-stakes tests also help teachers gauge how well students understand the material and what they need to reteach. This is effective when tests are formative -that is, designed for immediate feedback so that students and teachers can see students' areas of strength and weakness and address areas for growth. Summative tests, such as a final exam that measures how much was learned but offers no opportunities for a student to improve, have been found to be less effective.

Testing Format Matters

Teachers should tread carefully with test design, however, as not all tests help students retain information. Though multiple choice tests are relatively easy to create, they can contain misleading answer choices-that are either ambiguous or vague-or offer the infamous all-, some-, or none-of-the-above choices, which tend to encourage guessing.
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While educators often rely on open-ended questions, such short-answer questions, because they seem to offer a genuine window into student thinking, research shows that there is no difference between multiple choice and constructed response questions in terms of demonstrating what students have learned.

In the end, well-constructed multiple choice tests, with clear questions and plausible answers (and no all- or none-of-the-above choices), can be a useful way to assess students' understanding of material, particularly if the answers are quickly reviewed by the teacher.

All students do not do equally well on multiple choice tests, however. Girls tend to do less well than boys and perform better on questions with open-ended answers, according to a 2018 study by Stanford University's Sean Reardon, which found that test format alone accounts for 25 percent of the gender difference in performance in both reading and math. Researchers hypothesize that one explanation for the gender difference on high-stakes tests is risk aversion, meaning girls tend to guess less.

Giving more time for fewer, more complex or richer testing questions can also increase performance, in part because it reduces anxiety. Research shows that simply introducing a time limit on a test can cause students to experience stress, so instead of emphasizing speed, teachers should encourage students to think deeply about the problems they're solving.

Setting the Right Testing Conditions

Test achievement often reflects outside conditions, and how students do on tests can be shifted substantially by comments they hear and what they receive as feedback from teachers.

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What Does the Research Say About Testing?

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For many teachers, the image of students sitting in silence filling out bubbles, computing mathematical equations, or writing timed essays causes an intensely negative reaction. Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 and its 2015 update, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), every third through eighth grader in U.S.

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What are Rubrics and why are they Important?

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What are Rubrics and why are they Important?

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This document is helpful for understanding why rubrics are important to assessment and why they are used.

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Brookhart - What are Rubrics and why are they important.docx

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This resource gives examples of different rubric styles (e.g. holistic, analytic) and explains when the best time to use each type is.

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Instructors have many tasks to perform during the semester, including grading assignments and assessments. Feedback on performance is a critical factor in helping students improve and succeed. Grading rubrics can provide more consistent feedback for students and create efficiency for the instructor/grader.

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work, including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations. Rubrics are helpful for instructors because they can help them communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly and efficiently. Finally, rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Step 1: Define the Purpose

The first step in the rubric-creation process is to define the purpose of the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

What is the assignment?

Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks?

Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?

What are the learning objectives for the assignment?

What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment?

What would an excellent assignment look like?

How would you describe an acceptable assignment?

How would you describe an assignment that falls below expectations?

What kind of feedback do you want to give students for their work?

Do you want/need to give them a grade? If so, do you want to give them a single overall grade or detailed feedback based on a variety of criteria?

Do you want to give students specific feedback that will help them improve their future work?

Step 2: Decide What Kind of Rubric You Will Use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric consists of a single scale with all the criteria to be included in the evaluation (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) being considered together. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score (usually on a 1-4 or 1-6 point scale) based on an overall judgment of the student's work. The rater matches an entire piece of student work to a single description on the scale.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

Place an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot

Save time by minimizing the number of decisions to be made

Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

Do not provide specific feedback for improvement

Can be difficult to choose a score when a student's work is at varying levels across the criteria

Criteria cannot be weighted

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric. An analytic rubric resembles a grid with the criteria for an assignment listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row, often using numbers and/or descriptive tags. The cells within the center of the rubric may be left blank or may contain descriptions of what the specified criteria look like for each level of performance. When scoring with an analytic rubric, each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

Provide feedback on areas of strength or weakness

Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric

May not be used consistently across raters unless the rubrics are well defined

May limit personalized feedback to help students improve

Single-Point Rubric. Similar to an analytic/descriptive rubric in that it breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria. The detailed performance descriptors are only for the level of proficiency. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric

More likely that students will read the descriptors

Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended removes a focus on the grade/points

May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3: Define the Criteria

Ask yourself: What knowledge and skills are required for the assignment/assessment? Make a list of these, group and label them, and eliminate any that are not critical.

Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

Review the learning objectives for the course; use the assignment prompt, existing grading checklists, peer response sheets, comments on previous work, past examples of student work, etc.

Try describing A/B/C work.

Consider "sentence starters" with verbs describing student performance from Bloom's Taxonomy or other terms to indicate various levels of performance, i.e., presence to absence, complete to incomplete, many to some to none, major to minor, consistent to inconsistent, always to usually to sometimes to rarely

Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues

Brainstorm and discuss with students

Consider the effectiveness of the criteria:

Can they be observed and measured?

Are they important and essential?

Are they distinct from other criteria?

Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?

Revise the criteria as needed

Consider how you will weigh them in relation to each other

Step 4: Design the Rating Scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions:

Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?

Will you use numbers or descriptive labels for these levels?

If you choose descriptive labels, what labels are most appropriate? Will you assign a number to those labels?

In what order will you list these levels - from lowest to highest or vice versa?

Step 5: Write Descriptions for Each Level of the Rating Scale

Create statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric. For an analytic rubric, do this for each particular criterion of the rubric. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Start with the top/exemplary work category -what does it look like when a student has achieved excellence in each category? Then look at the "bottom" category -what does it look like when students have not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then add the categories in between.

Also, take into consideration that well-written descriptions:

Describe observable and measurable behavior

Use parallel language across the scale

Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 6: Create your Rubric

Develop the criteria, rating scale, and descriptions for each level of the rating scale into a rubric

Include the assignment at the top of the rubric, space permitting

For reading and grading ease, limit the rubric to a single page, if possible

Consider the effectiveness of your rubric and revise accordingly

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar, iRubric

Step 7: Pilot-test your Rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

Colleagues

Teacher Assistants

Students

Also, try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

Best Practices

Use Parallel Language. Make sure that the language from column to column is similar and that syntax and wording correspond. Of course, the words will change for each section or assignment, as will the expectations, but in terms of readability, make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa. In addition, if you have an indicator described in one category, it will need to be described in the next category, whether it is about "having included" or "not having included" something. This is all about clarity and transparency to students.

Use Student-Friendly Language. If students can't understand the rubric, it will not be useful for guiding instruction, reflection, and assessment. If you want students to engage in using the rubric, they have to understand it. Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.

Use the Rubric with Your Students. You have to use the rubric with the students. It means nothing to them if you don't. For students to find the rubric useful in terms of their learning, they must see a reason for using it. Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.

Don't Use Too Many Columns. The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Common Rubrics and Templates are Awesome. Avoid rubric fatigue, as in creating rubrics to the point where you just can't do it anymore. This can be done with common rubrics that students see across multiple classroom activities and through creating templates that you can alter slightly as needed. Design those templates for learning targets or similar performance tasks in your classroom. It's easy to change these types of rubrics later. Figure out your common practices and create a single rubric your team can use.

Rely on Descriptive Language. The most effective descriptions are those that use specific descriptions. This means avoiding words like "good" and "excellent." At the same time, don't rely on numbers, such as a number of resources, as your crutch. Instead of saying, "find excellent sources" or "use three sources," focus your rubric language on the quality use of whatever sources students find and on the best possible way of aligning that data to the work. It isn't about the number of sources, and "excellent" is too vague for students. Be specific and descriptive.

Examples

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Needs Improvement (1) Developing (2) Sufficient (3) Above Average (4)

Clarity (Thesis supported by relevant information and ideas)

The purpose of the student work is not well-defined. Central ideas are not focused to support the thesis. Thoughts appear disconnected.

The central purpose of the student work is identified. Ideas are generally focused in a way that supports the thesis.

The central purpose of the student work is clear and ideas are almost always focused in a way that supports the thesis. Relevant details illustrate the author's ideas.

The central purpose of the student work is clear and supporting ideas always are always well-focused. Details are relevant, enrich the work.

Organization (Sequencing of elements/ ideas)

Information and ideas are poorly sequenced (the author jumps around). The audience has difficulty following the thread of thought.

Information and ideas are presented in an order that the audience can follow with minimum difficulty.

Information and ideas are presented in a logical sequence which is followed by the reader with little or no difficulty.

Information and ideas are presented in a logical sequence which flows naturally and is engaging to the audience.

Mechanics (Correctness of grammar and spelling)

There are five or more misspellings and/or systematic grammatical errors per page or eight or more in the entire document. The readability of the work is seriously hampered by errors.

There are no more than four misspellings and/or systematic grammatical errors per page or six or more in the entire document. Errors distract from the work.

There are no more than three misspellings and/or grammatical errors per page and no more than five in the entire document. The readability of the work is minimally interrupted by errors.

There are no more than two misspelled words or grammatical errors in the document.

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper

Articulating thoughts through written communication- final paper.

1. Above Average: The audience is able to easily identify the focus of the work and is engaged by its clear focus and relevant details. Information is presented logically and naturally. There are no more than two mechanical errors or misspelled words to distract the reader.

2. Sufficient: The audience is easily able to identify the focus of the student work which is supported by relevant ideas and supporting details. Information is presented in a logical manner that is easily followed. There is minimal interruption to the work due to misspellings and/or mechanical errors.

3. Developing: The audience can identify the central purpose of the student work without little difficulty and supporting ideas are present and clear. The information is presented in an orderly fashion that can be followed with little difficulty. There are some misspellings or mechanical errors, but they do not distract from the work.

4. Needs Improvement: The audience cannot clearly or easily identify the central ideas or purpose of the student work. Information is presented in a disorganized fashion causing the audience to have difficulty following the author's ideas. There are many misspellings and/or mechanical errors that negatively affect the audience's ability to read the work.

Single-Point Rubric

Moodle How-To Guides

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

Resources

Supplemental Tools with Rubrics in Moodle

DELTA - Rubrics: Making Assignments Easier for You and Your Students (2/1/2022)

DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics. Retrieved from http://resources.depaul.edu/teaching-commons/teaching-guides/feedback-grading/rubrics/Pages/default.aspx

Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics. Cult of Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/

Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics. Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec96/vol54/num04/Understanding-Rubrics.aspx

Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/designing-using-rubrics-andrew-miller

Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1628-3_3

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Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

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Instructors have many tasks to perform during the semester, including grading assignments and assessments. Feedback on performance is a critical factor in helping students improve and succeed. Grading rubrics can provide more consistent feedback for students and create efficiency for the instructor/grader.

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This resource explains why summative assessment is important and gives examples of types of summative assessment that you can give students.

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Different ways to assess learning and provide holistic feedback at the end of the instructional period.

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This blog discusses motivating students through feedback and what types of feedback work best to motivate students.

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Formative assessment, along with effective feedback, is one of the most impactful parts of teaching and when done well, it can foster significant improvement.

What is formative assessment?

Formative assessment is any learning activity which reveals information to teachers and learners which can be used to improve learning. This is distinct from summative assessment, the intent of which is to provide terminal grading. Formative assessment allows teachers to understand where a learner is currently 'at', so that the teacher can a) adapt future instruction to better meet learning needs b) consider differentiating their support, and c) enable effective feedback to and between learners.

As well as providing teachers with a continuous understanding of what stages their learners are at, formative assessment is also effective in allowing pupils to develop their metacognitive skills, building independence for self-learning. (Adapted from Black and Wiliam 1998).

What is Feedback?

Once you've assessed what the learner is doing well and what they need to do in order to improve, the purpose of feedback is to give that information back to the learner. Feedback can come from many places: from the teacher, from other learners and most powerfully, from self-regulating learners themselves.

When students receive effective feedback, it helps them to understand where they are in terms of the objective or outcome, where they should be, and how to close the gap between the two. Effective feedback, therefore, has a focus on learning.

Shirley Clarke (2001) outlines, however, that a large proportion of the feedback that teachers provide is concerned with issues such as presentation, surface features and student effort. As a consequence, the required focus on learning is neglected.

Giving effective feedback

For feedback to be effective and improve learning, it must assist students in determining which learning goals are realistic and doable. It should also provide students with the required information on how to achieve their goals, and how to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be. It is, therefore, essential that teachers actively seek to provide students with feedback that provides the information they want, and need, to work out where to go next.

Feedback of this nature helps to facilitate a shift in learner motivation from an extrinsic, performance-oriented system where rewards are given (based on fixed ability and a comparison to others), to an intrinsic learning-orientated system, based on effort and students' belief in their own ability to learn. By comparing efforts against their past achievements, students become more motivated (and are more likely) to take on new challenges.

Effective feedback also empowers students and improves their self-esteem. This is because it enables learners to be assessed on their own attainment of the learning objective and as they are given the support necessary to improve. Students are also encouraged to take greater responsibility for their own learning as they have a better understanding of what they need to do. Indeed, this is why feedback is a vital aspect of assessment for learning.

How to give effective feedback to help learners "reduce the gap"

1. Provide specific and actionable information which allows the learner to adapt and improve (hence the close relationship with formative assessment).

2. Provide replicable frameworks to enable learners to become agents of their own progress. Self-regulation is developed as the learner can clearly see what they have already achieved and what they will need to do to get the desired outcome.

Ready to take this to the next level?

If you enjoyed the above and are keen to further improve your assessment and feedback skills, try recording your classroom practice on video and then watch it back for effective reflection. You may even want to share this video with a peer or mentor to gain valuable feedback.

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Closing the gap: How to improve your assessment & feedback skills

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Formative assessment, along with effective feedback, is one of the most impactful parts of teaching and when done well, it can foster significant improvement. Formative assessment is any learning activity which reveals information to teachers and learners which can be used to improve learning.

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This YouTube video explains why feedback is important for creating meaning to the grades students are given.

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The Meaning of Feedback in Assessment for Learning

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This article gives examples of some effective formative assessments that can be quickly delivered in the classroom.

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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This quick video shows teachers discussing the importance of formative assessment. They explain that formative assessment helps teachers understand where students are and what misconceptions they may have in their learning.

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This article discusses the importance of assessment and what happens when assessment works effectively (e.g. provides feedback, motivates performance, etc.).

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Asking students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter is critical to the learning process; it is essential to evaluate whether the educational goals and standards of the lessons are being met. From Edutopia.org’s Assessment Professional Development Guide.

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This article discusses testing through validity, reliability, and comparability. It also discusses the history of standardized tests and how they are not equitable for students.

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Part of a Series

In this article

Fourth grade students work on their math at an elementary school in Waukegan, Illinois, January 2016. (Getty/Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service)

This series is about the future of testing in America's schools.

Introduction and summary

Assessments are a way for stakeholders in education to understand what students know and can do. They can take many forms, including but not limited to paper and pencil or computer-adaptive formats. However, assessments do not have to be tests in the traditional sense at all; rather, they can be carried out through teacher observations of students or portfolios of students' work. Regardless of form, when assessments are well designed and a component of a system of teaching and learning that includes high-quality instruction and materials, they are part of the solution and not a source of the problem. Thus, debates on whether or not to assess students fail to create a worthwhile discussion about testing in schools and how to make assessments better.

When they are well built, standardized and nonstandardized assessments play a useful role in providing educational equity-that is, helping all students achieve at high levels. Accordingly, this report offers an alternative to the argument that all assessments are harmful: an idea for what role all assessments should play in education and the federal and state policy structure needed to make this a reality.

Assessments-in particular, one annual standardized assessment of all public school students in reading and math-became the law of the land starting in 2001 with the renewal and renaming of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as the No Child Left Behind Act. The rationale for this policy is to promote equity in educational opportunity by measuring how well the public education system teaches students to master a state's academic standards in these subjects.

Despite this laudable goal, federally required assessments are at times criticized because America's students have made little progress since 2001 and their results correlate with race and socioeconomic status. However, the reality remains that one assessment alone is insufficient to solve the problem of inequity in education. That is because state standardized assessments look back at the end of the year and evaluate whether students learned the state's academic standards in reading and math. They are not designed to provide information to guide teachers' daily interactions with students. This type of high-quality information, as well as professional development in how to use student data effectively, is needed to drive learning forward. Thus, the state assessment must be part of a broader system of assessments that produce data that can evaluate, inform, and predict learning to help achieve educational equity.

The Center for American Progress found that while some of the criticisms of assessments-the annual state standardized assessment in particular-are valid and must be addressed, not all of them have merit. Too often, the criticisms tend to suggest that all standardized testing is harmful or not useful.

Still, improvement at the national scale is needed. The level of research and innovation required to make assessments effective can only be achieved through federal investment and programs. For example, federal policies should invest more in assessment development, through the pilot authorized in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and through existing assessment funding programs in that law. The federal government can play an important role in researching assessment design and understanding where and how it has a disparate impact on students. Finally, the federal government should use its resources to help ensure that teachers and school leaders become masters of local assessment development and use so that they have the data they need-when they need it-to guide student learning. And for their part, state policies should develop well-thought-out systems of assessments that are based on the state's learning standards and curriculum.

What are standardized assessments and what purpose do they serve?

Large-scale standardized assessments are just one type of assessment used in schools, with two main purposes: The first is used to predict student performance against a set of benchmarks, while the second is used to understand how many of the test's benchmarks students reached at the end of the year. That is, standardized assessments can be designed to be predictive or evaluative.

A standardized assessment presents test-takers with the same questions or the same types of questions and is administered and scored in the same way. Designed to provide consistent results, standardized tests allow for comparisons between students in a single year and over time.

Standardized assessments play a prominent role in education in the United States; all public school students must take assessments in reading and math each year in grades three through eight as well as once in high school. These tests measure what students know and can do against common state-developed, grade-level standards.

What is an academic standard?

An academic standard is what a student should know and be able to do in a particular subject. For example, a second grade student in math should know the ones and tens places in double-digit numbers.

Teachers are required to teach these standards and can use a wide variety of instructional materials and approaches to guide their students' learning. Thus, while federal law requires states to have the same academic standards for all students within the state, given the different levels of quality of instructional materials and practices, not all students have the same opportunity to learn and master those standards.

The other types of assessments in education, which are used to predict student performance and inform instruction, are used more frequently during the school year and help to guide teachers, administrators, and even parents in providing students with the right supports at the right time. Importantly, not all assessments produce a numbered score. Some, for example, can take the form of teacher observations of student work and produce a descriptive assessment.

3 technical qualities of assessments required by federal law

This text box provides definitions of validity, reliability, and comparability in assessments and why they matter:

Validity refers to how accurately and fully a test measures the skills it intends to measure.For example, if an algebra test includes some geometry questions, that test is not a valid measure of algebra.

Reliability refers to the consistency of the test scores across different testing sessions, different editions of the test, and when different people score the exam. Reliability indicates how consistently the test measures the knowledge and skills it should as well ensures that it is not measuring error.

Comparability allows for the comparison of test scores even if students took the test at different times, in different places, and under different conditions.For example, test developers will design a test that may be administered via computer or via paper and pencil to account for these differences so results can be compared.

These requirements help ensure apples-to-apples comparisons between the results of the test given on different days and under different conditions.

A state assessment's technical qualities are one tool to prioritize equity because they help ensure test results can answer the question, "How well are all students meeting a state's college- and career-ready standards in reading and math and growing in their knowledge?" Here, "college- and career-ready" means that when students meet or exceed the academic standards in reading and math, they qualify to enroll in credit-bearing courses in college. They do not need to take remedial classes to make up for unfinished learning needed for credit-bearing courses.

History of standardized assessments in the United States

Schools and standardized testing began in the first 100 years of the United States' founding, and it did so against a backdrop of systemic racism and white supremacy. Prior to the 1860s and emancipation, enslaved people and nonwhite people were barred from accessing education and were often punished if it was discovered they were learning to read and write. Education during this time period was reserved for the white elite.

It was within this context that the first uses of standardized tests in American education began.

College admissions, general intelligence, and K-12 achievement tests

Like in education in America, there is a deep history of racism within standardized assessments. The earliest use of assessments in America were oral qualifying exams for college admissions prior to 1840.

That year marked the first uses of standardized tests in public schools. In 1845, educator Horace Mann developed common exams for school students in Boston Public Schools in an attempt to understand the quality of teaching and learning.

Mann's test sparked psychologist Edward L. Thorndike's quest for other measures of intelligence, believing that society would benefit from systematic sorting and segregation of students by academic ability. Seven states-California, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania-used these exams from 1900 to 1910.

In 1905, commissioned by the French government, psychologist Alfred Binet developed an intelligence test to identify learning deficiencies, describing "slow children who would not profit significantly from schooling." And in 1916, Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman took Binet's original tеѕt and created the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales to sort students by ability into college or vocational pathways. This exam is still used today.

The U.S. Army used a multiple-choice test to measure soldiers' mental abilities for the purpose of sorting, assigning, and discharging them during World War I. This test would become the model for future standardized assessments. In 1919, Terman transformed the Army Alpha test into the National Intelligence Tests for school students, selling more than 400,000 copies in 11 months.

Testing to uphold white supremacy

Literacy tests were used to disenfranchise Black men after ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, until enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and other methods of keeping Black people from exercising their right to vote.

Throughout the beginning of the 20th century, intelligence tests were used to determine which immigrants were "undesireable" and should not be permitted entry into the country. Federal law in 1915 required anyone who failed the test to be turned away.

Testing for public school evaluation and accountability

The use of standardized testing in schools spread nationwide after Iowa developed tests for its high school students. In 1935, the first Iowa Test of Basic Skills was administered to students in grades six through eight. Other states began using the Iowa assessment, which remained the most-used achievement test in the nation for 50 years.

But the role of testing in schools shifted in the 1970s after the then-U.S. commissioner of education created the first National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 1969. It sought to provide a snapshot of the progress of education in America, using the latest testing technology to produce sound and reliable results by assessing a representative sample of the nation's students.

The NAEP marks the modern era of standardized assessments in schools to evaluate learning and a shift away from measuring intelligence toward measuring academic standards.

In the 1990s, a handful of states developed statewide testing systems that used sampling methods much like the NAEP to take a representative snapshot of how well students perform on academic tests in various subjects.

Federal K-12 education laws and testing

Simply put, today's federal K-12 education laws ask states, in exchange for federal funding, to ensure that students are meeting grade-level benchmarks in reading and math. These benchmarks are set by experts in math and reading as well as in psychometrics, or the measurement of learning. The benchmarks increase in complexity grade by grade, so when students complete their education in 12th grade, they are ready for the academic demands of college-whatever form that might take-or their chosen career path. This report and the law refer to standards like these as high or rigorous standards. Federal law also asks states to evaluate schools based on these results and report these results publicly.

Federal policy did not start out this way; it has evolved since the 1990s, when states began adopting academic standards. The federal Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 asked states to apply the same standards in reading and math to all students and to assess their progress in learning the standards for the first time.

In 2001, Congress updated the Improving America's Schools Act, renaming it as the No Child Left Behind Act. The updated law required states to use those test results to evaluate schools and identify which ones needed improvement. States published those results publicly every year and gave them to parents. A 2011 federal initiative under the Obama administration, called ESEA Flexibility, allowed states to use additional criteria to evaluate schools, but most states' criteria primarily consisted of standardized test scores.

The follow-up to the No Child Left Behind Act, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act, maintains much of the policy from ESEA Flexibility. For example, ESSA asks states to use both test scores and other criteria to evaluate all public schools. It also requires states to identify a subset of its lowest-performing schools for which to provide additional support to help them improve.

The debate about standardized testing in schools often tends to miss that the assessment requirements in federal law serve a purpose: They are one way the law helps to ensure all students receive a high-quality education through the public education system. At its heart, ESSA is a civil rights law, providing additional resources to low-income students. It also protects the quality of education by asking states to ensure that all children learn the knowledge and skills that will help them in college and their careers. Measuring student progress toward a state's learning standards through an annual assessment is one way to know whether all students are on track or not, using a common measuring stick.

The civil rights goals of federal K-12 education laws

The first version of ESSA, then called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), was built on the heels of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which both aimed to tackle segregation and discrimination. ESEA intended to give students from families with low resources a chance at equal education. Likewise, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975 (IDEA) ensured that all students with disabilities received this same opportunity. Prior to the passage of IDEA, many students with disabilities were excluded from traditional classrooms.

The first version of ESSA centered on the role that money plays in education. It gave additional funding to schools in under-resourced communities whose local property tax bases did not provide the same amount of resources as schools in wealthy neighborhoods.

ESSA's role more recently evolved to address not just education funding but also its quality. After years of flatlining, and even declining, results in educational outcomes, documented by the U.S. Department of Education report "A Nation at Risk," the law began to play a role in the effort to improve the quality of public school education. At the heart of this law-and what it requires-is an effort to include all students in public education and to hold them to the same high expectations. It does so by asking states to use their annual assessments as one measure of educational progress.

The goals of inclusion, high standards, and educational progress are the right goals. And the law has been effective in getting states to raise their standards and to include in states' accountability mechanisms for schools all students' progress on those standards. For example, states must certify that students who meet the standards when they graduate high school can enroll in college without needing remedial coursework to catch up on missed learning. And every year, states must calculate how many students met grade-level benchmarks against the goal of 95 percent of students, or the actual number of students who took the state assessment if it is lower than 95 percent.

But incremental and disproportionate progress on test scores between student groups suggests the law has been less effective in ensuring educational progress. This is in part because education is a complex process where students learn information, gain experience, and make sense of it all in a way that is useful to forging one's path in life. The complexity of learning at any age cannot and should not primarily be measured by a single test.

Furthermore, research documents that students' basic needs must be met for them to be ready to learn. This is especially true for the young mind in childhood, during which it develops more than at any other time in life.

However, as the adage goes, you cannot manage what you cannot measure-meaning that while state assessments are not the silver bullet to improving the education system, they are a critical part of that process. The role that state standardized assessments should play in education is to improve the teaching and learning system. State test results at the school district level, for example, should inform what resources and supports teachers need to improve their instruction. At the state level, results can inform state efforts to provide more resources to districts needing additional supports.

Is the issue with the test, or how the test is administered and used?

The opposition to using standardized testing in schools, in part due to the history of racism in the tests, is understandably not just a historical phenomenon; vestiges of this past remain in today's tests. Racism in testing is something that needs to be unpacked and addressed fully.

That said, some critics of standardized testing in schools miss that there are distinct issues to be acknowledged and then addressed-issues that reside with the test itself, how the test is given, and how the test results are used. These issues are too frequently treated as if they are one, so critics' response is often to throw out the annual state test entirely. But to address these issues, and to make future assessments of student learning better, policymakers must understand these issues distinctly, as each will require different policy remedies and technical fixes.

Criticisms of annual state standardized tests include: The tests are biased; they take too long to complete; students experience stereotype threat, which is an unconscious response to a negative stereotype about a certain group by a member of that group, when taking tests; the results are not useful for teachers; the use of these tests narrowed the curriculum used in schools; they resulted in teaching to the test; and the results are used to take money away from schools.

The authors organize these criticisms as outlined in Table 1.
Table 1
Not all criticisms of the state assessment have merit, nor do their real or perceived impacts affect students, teachers, and schools in the same way. To illustrate this, Table 1 presents these criticisms according to their real or perceived impact as well as by whether the impact is based on the assessment itself, how the assessment is administered, or how the assessment results are used. Understanding the effects and their source will help policymakers, administrators, and educators identify appropriate solutions for the root cause.

This section dissects these criticisms using a fact-based review to examine the purported impacts and deem whether they have merit and to what degree. The analysis cites claims where necessary.

Common criticism: The state standardized test is biased

Is this claim true or false? It is true, but there are multiple issues to understand.

When it comes to assessments, the term "bias" has a specific meaning. Bias happens when student inputs (their answers) are misinterpreted, misevaluated, and then scored differently.

There are three areas of the test where bias might occur: what it is trying to measure (the construct), how it is trying to measure (the method), or the test question itself (the item):

Construct bias is an error in the measurement of the skill; for example, an item is looking to measure verbal skills but instead measures listening skills.

Method bias is an error in the sample of students, the test form itself (in which the form is confusing), or the administration (how the test forms are given to students and collected is confusing).

Item bias is where the test question itself is ambiguous or can result in a low or high familiarity among certain test-takers due to cultural influence.

Since standardized testing began, there have always been racial patterns in the results, suggesting bias. While this bias was initially by design, as outlined in the history of racism and assessments section of this report, modern assessment development techniques seek to eliminate bias. However, a 2010 study of the SAT confirmed a particular type of bias within its assessments: item bias.

Bias in the news

A study of the SAT published in 2010 found that harder test items favored Black test-takers and easier questions favored white. That is, Black students taking the test more often answered the harder questions correctly at a higher rate than white students, who more often answered the easier questions correctly.

Why would this situation be the case?

Researchers theorize that the easier questions use more casual, everyday language that is part of white dominant culture. The study also suggests that the way the SAT is scored holds Black student scores down because the easier questions receive more points.

Therefore, if the harder questions received more points, this bias could be addressed when the test is scored. This example shows that even if there is bias in any aspect of the test, that bias can be balanced out in the scoring process. However, this method is not a complete answer to rooting out bias or its impact in assessments.

When there are consistently racial patterns in the results, bias is present somewhere in the test, whether in the construct, method, or item, or some combination of these.

Bias in state standardized tests for school accountability

Regarding state standardized tests used for federal accountability, states undergo rigorous analysis to detect and remove all types of bias and must submit this evidence to the U.S. Department of Education for their assessment systems to be approved.

The department runs a peer review process of each state's assessment system, with experts in test development and curriculum as well as teachers and local assessment administrators. The data are in the form of analysis of test-taker results; it is not possible to analyze a test before it is given to test-takers because experts must see evidence of how the students interacted with the test.

There is no question that bias exists in standardized testing, and there is no question that standardized testing is one tool to understand how students are doing against common, challenging standards of learning. Therefore, future versions of tests should pilot new test items on a broader range of students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to minimize-or better yet eliminate-bias. And where bias occurs in test construct, how the skills and knowledge are being assessed must be better understood and addressed.

However, while eliminating bias is a necessary step, it is not sufficient on its own if educators are to take an anti-racist approach to teaching and learning.

Assessments and cultural competence

Solely addressing bias in assessments is an incomplete response; assessments are one part of a larger system of teaching and learning, which also includes standards, instructional materials, and instructional practice. These elements must be evaluated for bias and addressed as an entire system.

The question of synchronizing these parts of the teaching and learning experience extends beyond the academic content, to the interactions between teachers and students, the climate of the school, and the larger sociocultural context. This entire process is known as cultural synchronization, and the practice of applying it to teaching is called culturally responsive pedagogy.

Culturally responsive pedagogy is an attempt to create continuity between what students experience at home and what they experience at schools. Students see people who share their race and ethnicity included in the topics they study, for example. When students have access to culturally responsive pedagogy, they experience academic success and develop cultural competence and the ability to question the current social order, thereby allowing students to gain a sense of empowerment from their history and culture.

Common criticism: It is hard for teachers to prepare students without knowing the test material

Is this claim true or false? It is neither.

Federal law places a premium on test security. Test results are used to evaluate school performance and must be a fair and accurate representation of student participation in the test. Therefore, only test developers know the exact test items.

This does not mean that teachers do not know what kinds of test items will be included, however. Two groups-the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)-developed an annual statewide assessment that more than 40 states first used in 2014. Each group releases test items used on previous tests, which reflect the kinds of items included in future tests. Additionally, both consortia analyze student responses as a resource for teachers.

Common criticism: The tests take too long, lessening time for instruction

Is this claim true or false? It is neither, because the answer depends on what consumers of the test results value knowing about student performance.

The SBAC and PARCC assessments take about eight to nine hours total to complete for reading and math. This lengthy assessment is due to the law requiring that the test measures the full range and depth of the state's grade-level standards through formats that are not just multiple choice but also constructed response, or written answers. These types of test questions take more time to complete than filling in an answer bubble.

If policymakers, educators, and parents value knowing how well students have learned the full set of standards for their grade level-and not just responses to "yes" or "no" multiple-choice answers-then an eight- or nine-hour test will provide that information.

However, if policymakers, educators, and parents prefer having a high-level overview of whether students have learned at grade level, then a shorter exam will suffice.

Common criticism: Students experience stereotype threat when taking the test

Is this claim true or false? It is to be determined.

Stereotype threat occurs when a member of a certain social group is at risk of experiencing an unconscious response to a negative stereotype about that person's own group.

More than 300 studies show the impacts of stereotype threat, which include limiting one's aspirations in a field of study or career. Most of the studies are on college students and other adults, and none are specific to the state test. The studies include how participants performed on tasks as well as on tests.

Like bias, this is a phenomenon that probably exists among public school students and is an area that needs to be studied further to know how it might be affecting student performance and how it can be mitigated.

Common criticism: Results are not useful for teachers to employ in their practice

Is this claim true or false? It is false.

Annual state assessments results are used to evaluate, at year's end, whether students met the state's academic standards for their grade. As a result, they are not designed for teachers to use in their daily practice to customize instruction for students.

However, annual state assessments will show patterns for entire classrooms of students, and teachers can use this information to know generally what students did and did not learn and adjust their approach accordingly for the next school year's students.

Common criticism: State standardized tests narrowed the curriculum

Is this claim true or false? It is true, and it happened because of how the tests were used to evaluate schools.

In the period from 1987 to 2003, the amount of time devoted to different subjects held steady in public elementary schools: two hours to English, one hour to math, and a half-hour each to social studies and science.

However, since the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 and required reading and math tests to be included in school accountability results, 62 percent of a nationally representative sample of schools and 75 percent of schools identified as in need of improvement increased their time given to math and English by about half and decreased the time given to other subjects.

Common criticism: The tests result in teaching to the test

Is this claim true or false? It is true.

A 2007 review of 49 studies found that 80 percent of the studies saw a change in curriculum and increased focus on teacher-led instruction.

Generally, "teaching to the test" means "teaching in a manner that is not considered optimal for learning standard content or skills, but is believed to improve test performance."

Is teaching to the test always bad? Not necessarily. An assessment only covers a subset of the range of standards. If a teacher solely focuses on that subset, then students are missing out on other important content and skill development. But if tests are aligned with the depth and breadth of the standards, then teaching to the test some of the time can be advantageous.

Common criticism: Test results are used to take money from low-income schools

Is this claim true or false? It is false, although there are nuances to understand.

The No Child Left Behind Act measured school performance through a construct called adequate yearly progress (AYP). AYP referred to the total number of students who achieved a score of proficient or above on the state test. Students' scores of proficient or above were supposed to signify that they had achieved or exceeded the grade-level standards. For comparison, a grade of a C usually means proficient on an A-F grading scale.

When schools missed AYP targets, districts set aside 20 percent of their Title I funding-which provides additional education programs in schools in low-income communities-to pay for supplemental education services. These services include tutoring as well as transportation for students to attend higher-performing schools that also received Title I money.

As a result, districts did not exactly lose Title I money; however, they had to use it for a specific purpose when they did not meet AYP targets. Because there was less money to spend on services and resources for individual schools, the claim that test results lead to less money for schools does have some merit, but it is not the entire picture.

The current version of the law, ESSA, takes a different approach to deploying resources to schools that need them. It eliminates AYP and instead requires states to provide additional money to some schools that are classified as low-performing, many of which have been poorly funded for decades, to help them improve.

Common criticism: Test results are used to close schools serving Black and Latinx students

Is this claim true or false? It is true, but only for a subset of schools that were closed.

Between 2003 and 2013, approximately 2 percent of all U.S. public schools closed. Many of these were due to declining populations. Some of them, however, were due to poor student outcomes, as indicated in part by state assessment results.

A 2017 study of closures found that 1,522 schools closed between 2006-07 and 2012-13 because their state assessment scores were in the bottom 20 percent of the 26 states included in the study. In the study, schools with higher rates of Black and Hispanic students were more likely to close than similarly performing schools with smaller shares of students who are racial and ethnic minorities.

Recommendations: The role that assessments should play in education

Assessments should drive excellent teaching and ensure that all students learn at high levels. To do so, education policy and practice must encompass a broader range of assessments so that schools have complete and effective assessment systems. This system would include predictive, informative, and evaluative assessments based on the state's standards and curriculum. Such a system would be based on three principles:

1. Assessments should be used only for their three intended purposes: 1) to predict student performance, 2) to inform instruction, or 3) to evaluate learning. A complete system would include assessments that serve one of these purposes, and there should not be too many assessments that serve the same purpose.

2. All assessments should align with the state's academic standards and with high-quality instructional materials. This alignment allows for a tighter integration between what students learn in class and the items that will be included on the assessment. Additionally, assessment results will send consistent signals about how well students are learning the standards and what they must continue to learn to master the full range by year's end.

3. Effective assessment systems use the data appropriately and for the right audiences. For example, teachers should use predictive assessment results to inform what standards students must still learn to be able to grasp the content of the first lesson in a unit of instruction. Predictive assessments can also shed light on whether students are on track to meet benchmarks on end-of-year or other evaluative assessments. On the other hand, district administrators and policymakers can use evaluative assessment results to inform what types of additional supports students may need to achieve the standards. Because of the different tools policymakers, administrators, and educators must deploy in the education system, all of these stakeholders must be informed on how to appropriately interpret assessment results.

Assessment audits can be an effective tool to guide states' and districts' understanding of what assessments they currently use and what purpose they serve, ensuring that students are not overassessed for evaluation purposes but also to give information that predicts their learning and informs instruction. Conducting such an audit can be a useful first step in building an effective and balanced assessment system.

A case study for local assessments: Finland

For years, Finland enjoyed top rankings on the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test of 15-year-olds in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. Though Finland consistently outranks most other countries, its scores have declined-a puzzling development for researchers.

Despite the decline, Finland credits its educational success to its heavy investment in teacher training as well as its model for using independent and group projects as ways to engage students in their learning.

Notably, Finland takes a very different approach to assessments than the United States. The country eliminated its national evaluative assessment and instead allows teachers to design their own assessments that are based on the national curriculum. The same training equips teachers to design school-based projects for students. The country only uses predictive standardized assessments for students to take at the end of their education. Those results are used for consideration for college admissions, not for evaluating education programs, students, or teachers.

As a comparison in the United States, the quality of teacher development and training varies widely and does not uniformly reflect the quality of the opportunities available in Finland or other high-achieving countries.

While Finland's example showcases the power of assessments to inform instruction, that is only one aspect of a complete and effective assessment system.

How federal policies can support the effective use of assessment in teaching and learning

Effective and complete assessment systems contribute to student learning. Currently, however, states are not required to have such systems in place-only an annual evaluative assessment, which is a practice that began with the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. As a result, the focus on one test and its use to evaluate schools created bad incentives, as discussed earlier in this report. However, that does not mean that evaluative tests should not play a role in education; to the contrary, high-quality assessments aligned to a state's standards are a critical tool in the teaching and learning process. Federal policy should thus push states and districts to establish and maintain effective and balanced assessment systems.

Accordingly, any future updates to ESSA should ask states to design a vision for how assessments are part of the teaching and learning process and then describe which assessments predict student performance, inform teaching and learning, and evaluate student learning.

At same time, more large-scale research and development is needed in the practice and use of assessments. This is a great role for the federal government to play. The federal government should:

Fund the assessment pilot in ESSA and loosen some of its restrictions to support states in trying more innovative designs, even if those designs do not pan out. The assessment pilot gives states five years to try new assessment designs to replace the state's annual evaluative assessment.

Fund the development of new ways to assess students across a broad range of skills and not just through tests, but through other demonstrations of student learning as well. This can be done outside of the assessment pilot through the Competitive Grants for State Assessments program.

Fund the development of predictive, informative, and evaluative assessments.

Fund the creation of new and better ways to report assessment results, not just to parents, but to teachers and policymakers as well.

Study bias in testing, including in testing construct, methods, and items.

Reshape the teacher-focused Title II of ESSA and the Higher Education Act of 1965 so that they promote the development of better teacher training and support when it comes to assessment use.

Partner with institutes of higher education to identify ways that the training of future psychometricians-scientists who develop assessments-should change to ensure that tomorrow's tests do not replicate the bias and other drawbacks seen in current versions.

Encourage states to create science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pathways that expose students to future careers as psychometric measurement experts to create a more diverse pool of psychometricians.

Conclusion

Today's conversation around assessments is dysfunctional and a zero-sum game. Assessments are neither useless nor are they the silver bullet to improving education. Instead, they are a vital tool to drive excellent teaching and learning. For equitable and effective testing to be fully realized, policymakers must invest in understanding the limits of today's assessments and build on those lessons. Innovation and research should support the development of assessment systems that drive teaching and learning forward as well as evaluate student learning.

The society and workforce of tomorrow will require students not only to master academic skills but also possess a broad range of crosscutting knowledge and abilities. America's current assessment system does a poor job of measuring how well students are prepared for that future and of guiding educators and parents to support students in their development. That is what policymakers and educators must address as they consider the future of assessments.

To that end, future research by the Center for American Progress will highlight ways in which technology advances may support the measurement of a broader range of student knowledge and skills.

About the authors

Laura Jimenez is the director of standards and accountability on the K-12 Education team at the Center for American Progress.

Jamil Modaffari is a research assistant for K-12 Education at the Center.

Acknowledgments

Alina von Davier, Duolingo

Ashley Eden, New Meridian

Bethany Little, EducationCounsel

Krasimir Staykov, Student Voice

Kristopher John, New Meridian

Mark Jutabha, WestEd

Michael Watson, New Classrooms

Mohan Sivaloganathan, Our Turn

Osonde Osoba, RAND Corp.

Roxanne Garcia, UnidosUS

Sandi Jacobs, EducationCounsel

Sean Worley, EducationCounsel

Scott Palmer, EducationCounsel

Terra Wallin, The Education Trust

Tim Langan, National Parents Union

The authors would like to thank the following people for their advice in writing this report:

Abby Javurek, Northwest Evaluation Association

Alina von Davier, Duolingo

Ashley Eden, New Meridian

Bethany Little, EducationCounsel

Edward Metz, Institute of Education Sciences

Elda Garcia, National Association of Testing Professionals

Jack Buckley, Robox; American Institutes for Research

James Pellegrino, University of Illinois at Chicago

John Whitmer, Institute of Education Sciences

Krasimir Staykov, Student Voice

Kristopher John, New Meridian

Laura Slover, CenterPoint Education Solutions

Margaret Hor, CenterPoint Education Solutions

Mark DeLoura, Games and Learning Inc.

Mark Jutabha, WestEd

Michael Rothman, independent consultant; formerly of Eskolta School Research and Design

Michael Watson, New Classrooms

Mohan Sivaloganathan, Our Turn

Neil Heffernan, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Osonde Osoba, RAND Corp.

Roxanne Garcia, UnidosUS

Sandi Jacobs, EducationCounsel

Sean Worley, EducationCounsel

Scott Palmer, EducationCounsel

Terra Wallin, The Education Trust

Tim Langan, National Parents Union

Vivett Dukes, National Parents Union

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Future of Testing in Education: Effective and Equitable Assessment Systems

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This analysis of testing in schools shows what the current debate gets wrong, and how educators and policymakers can create a future where assessments are a more effective part of the teaching and learning system.

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This article gives resources on how to support students who struggle with taking tests.

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Question: How Do You Support Students Overwhelmed by Taking Tests?

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Test anxiety can hinder student success. Share your strategies for supporting students who are overwhelmed by taking tests.

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This article is from the education board in Scotland but still is relevant to assessment here. It explains why assessment is conducted and how it is administered and used.

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What is meant by assessment?

​Assessment is carried out to see what children and young people know, understand and are able to do.

Assessment is very important for tracking progress, planning next steps, reporting and involving parents, children and young people in learning.

Assessment covers:

The ways teachers support and assess children's learning and monitor progress and identify next steps in learning.

Reporting to parents/carers, in writing and in discussions, to help them understand their child's progress and what they can do to help their child's learning.

Formal recognition of a child or young person's achievements through profiles and qualifications.

Recognising our children's achievements through a range of new qualifications in the senior school, which build on everything they have accomplished throughout their schooling.

Curriculum for Excellence has improved assessment in the following ways:

What is being assessed?

Assessment is a way of supporting learning. It helps teachers, learners, parents and others to understand the depth and breadth of learning undertaken so that progress and next steps can be discussed and planned.

There are eight curriculum areas (containing a range of subjects):

Expressive arts

Health and wellbeing

Languages (including English, Gaelic, classical languages and modern languages)

Mathematics

Religious and moral education

Sciences

Social studies

Technologies

Each curriculum area is broken down into a set of experiences and outcomes (often referred to as Es and Os):

The Experience describes the learning.

The Outcome represents what the learning will achieve. This is often explained, from the pupil's perspective as an 'I can....', 'I am able to....'

Teachers will assess what children know, understand and are able to do within the experiences and outcomes. Teachers will assess each learner's progress and achievements in:

There are also three key areas which are covered by all teachers/practitioners:

How are children assessed?

Your child's progress is not only based on 'tests' but on the learning that takes place within the classroom and in different settings outwith the classroom.

Evidence of children and young people's progress and achievements will come from day to day learning and through the things they may write, say, make or do. For example, evidence may emerge as a result of children and young people taking part in a presentation, discussion, performance or practical investigation. Evidence could also be a drawing, report, or piece of art work that they have produced. Evidence may be captured as a photograph, video or audio clip as part of a particular learning experience.

Gathering evidence

Evidence of progress and achievement can be gathered by:

When does assessment happen?

Assessment takes place as part of ongoing learning and teaching, periodically and at key transitions.

As part of ongoing learning

Children and young people's progress, strengths and needs are assessed as part of day-to-day learning and teaching. Teachers and others do this by, for example, watching and listening to learners carrying out tasks, by looking at what they write or make and by considering how they answer questions.

Children and young people will be involved in planning their next steps in learning.

Time to time (periodically)

From time to time, teachers will assess children and young people's progress and achievements in order to be able to plan ahead and to record and report on progress. This will help to ensure that their progress is on track and that any necessary action is taken to support their learning.

At key points, transitions

Transitions are the moves children and young people make, from home to early learning and childcare settings, from stage to stage (and through Curriculum for Excellence levels), from primary to secondary, to further or higher education and employment. Sharing of assessment information with parents is important to ensure all learners are supported and have a positive experience. Information about a learner's progress and achievements will be passed on to make sure that their broad general education and senior phase continue uninterrupted at the correct level and at an appropriate pace for them.

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What is assessment, and when and how does it take place?

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Education Scotland is a Scottish Government executive agency responsible for supporting quality and improvement in Scottish education.

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This article explains why assessment is important to improvement in students education and understanding.

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Why assessment is important

"In a culture of evidence, assessment is a necessary and integral part of greater student achievement. It becomes a tool for improvement: to improve learning, teaching, and the curriculum." - Roueche, Milliron, and Roueche, 2003

Assessment refers to the deliberate gathering of evidence of student learning to allow both teachers and learners to measure progress in a course. Therefore, assessments provide us with an opportunity to improve student learning, as well as to enhance our teaching through critical reflection on the results of the assessments in our course(s).

Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. Thomas Angelo writes that,

"Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education" (1995: 7).

Reasons to assess

Assessment gives us the opportunity to track student progress throughout the course. Assessment can give you a clearer picture of where your students are headed in a course. Assessment then becomes a way for you to re-assess and adjust your teaching approaches while also identifying any barriers, visible or invisible, that students may be facing as a result of your assessment choices. Ruth Stiehl & Les Lewchuk (2008: 34-43) divide the reasons why we assess students into three main categories: to assist, to advance, and to adjust. Each category includes a number of specific reasons why assessment is an important aspect of curriculum design. Expand the rows below to review each category.

Program Standards

As instructors we are required to ensure that our students meet provincial program standards for their chosen diploma or degree. Therefore, we need to assess student performance with respect to job preparation, prerequisites, and university or college program goals.

Watch the video below on the connection between program standards and assessments.

In addition to meeting the requirements of the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, you'll want to make sure you're following the policies and procedures around assessment and evaluation outlined by Niagara College. Some important policies are listed below.

Remember, it's your responsibility to follow these policies and seek assistance if you're unsure how the policy affects your situation. You could ask a course lead, program coordinator, associate dean, or mentor.

Ready to develop and improve your assessment(s)? Continue to the next section to learn how you can build assessments that effectively measure student learning.

References

Angelo, T.A. (1995). Reassessing (and defining) assessment. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 48, November: 7-9

Stiehl, R., & Lewchuck, L. (2008). The assessment primer: Creating a flow of learning evidence.

Corvallis, OR: The Learning Organization.

Roueche, J. E., Milliron, M. D., & Roueche, S. D. (2003). Practical magic: On the front lines of teaching excellence. Amer. Assn. of Community Col.

Attribution Statement

This chapter is an adaptation of Unit 1 of Assessment Foundations by College Educator Development Program (CEDP) and is used under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License. Changes include removal and rewriting some of the passages and adding original material.

definition

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3.4 The Importance of Assessing Students – NC Course Re-Design, Renewal, and Development Guide_Alpha

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Assessment refers to the deliberate gathering of evidence of student learning to allow both teachers and learners to measure progress in a course. Therefore, assessments provide us with an opportunity to improve student learning, as well as to enhance our teaching through critical reflection on the results of the assessments in our course(s).

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This article gives benefits of effective and well-crafted rubrics and how they can assist students learning.

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If you have never used a rubric to assess student assignments, you will find that using a well-crafted rubric makes your life easier and improves student learning.

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This resource provides more resources about how to create effective rubrics.

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In this video, Ellen Watson, educational developer, explains how she created an analytic rubric including criteria selection, creating weightings and values, and writing descriptors for each level for criteria. Watch here

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In this video, Ellen Watson, educational developer, explains how she created an analytic rubric including criteria selection, creating weightings and values, and writing descriptors for each level for criteria. Watch here

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This article gives tips on how to create meaningful rubrics that benefit both the teacher and the students.

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Every educator feels pretty darn cool the first few times they grade students' work. What a powerful feeling it ignites in us, right? However, the reality of how much time we have to spend grading sets in quickly and the task becomes more and more monotonous. No teacher digs grading the same problems, essay prompts, responses, etc. over and over again, but it is a large part of what we do on a daily basis.

So, why not make it meaningful? I'm fully convinced that the most powerful assessment tool out there is the rubric. I taught for more than a decade without consistently using rubrics, making claims along the way such as "I know the grade they deserve without a rubric," "Using a rubric will just create more work for me," or "Most rubrics are too complicated." Nonetheless, since I started utilizing them to assess student work, I have seen that rubrics can give invaluable feedback to me, to my students, and even to their parents.
Teachers who use rubrics:

set clear guidelines and expectations from the outset of the school year.

hold students accountable for the work they produce in a justifiable way.

let their students know on which areas they need concentrate the next time they are given a similar task.

see improvement in their students' work.

Teachers who do not use rubrics:

leave students without clear guidance on which skill areas they need to improve.

do not provide students with concrete evidence of what their work lacked.

do not provide sufficient guidance on what the student outcome was meant to be in the first place.

Basically, students who do not receive a rubric at the outset of an assignment feel frustration because they are not given specific parameters. It is human nature to want to know exactly what is expected of us when we set out to do something. Explicit guidelines lead students towards understanding what they need to do and, ultimately, what they did and did not do well.

Many teachers I meet want to use rubrics, but they do not know what to include on them. This, of course, will vary depending upon the grade levels you teach, your subject area, and the task at hand. However, teachers should keep a few things in mind when creating quality rubrics:

1. Be consistent. You should plainly lay out your expectations from day one by giving your students the criteria you will assess with throughout the year. You can show them from the get-go how they can approach, meet, or exceed your expectations. For example, if you are going to give a writing exercise, your rubric for that skill should vary little from one assignment to the next.

2. Base them around the skills you are assessing. The memorization of rote facts does little to exemplify how skilled students are at performing in the subject you teach. I know this firsthand because I am a Spanish teacher who once upon a time made her students memorize verb tenses completely out of context. Yes, many of them were capable of remembering and regurgitating them for a test, but then, they could not use them in a real world scenario. Now, I ask them to use language in a specific scenario and assess them using rubrics that measure their growth as communicative language students. I assess particular skills such as their ability to create with language, their ability to function in different time frames, their comprehensibility, and much more. I do not ask for specifics such as 5 uses of the preterite or 10 vocabulary words from the unit. Instead, they have to complete the task using what they know from our current unit, previous units, and even, previous levels of language study.

3. Use clear language. If the language you use on the rubric is full of educational jargon, you cannot expect your students to understand it. You must keep your expectations and criteria for measuring them clear. Tell them exactly what they need to do and which skills you will be measuring. I also recommend that, before using a rubric to grade your students, have them grade a sample assessment using the same rubric you will use to grade their work. This will help familiarize them with the skills you seek.

4. Embrace the positive. When you use a rubric, you indicate clearly the criteria you seek. And, normally, students do well in one, two, or several of the categories on which you assess them. If they end up with a low grade overall, they are not just seeing a confidence deflating '70' on the page, they are also buoyed by encouraging feedback. I always try to leave a constructive note somewhere on the document.

5. Leave room for creativity. I call this the "wow factor". All of my rubrics have "going beyond expectations" as one of its criteria. This is especially important if you are a proponent of project-based learning. Students should not simply be asked to meet expectations. While that may be all they do, if they want the maximum points, they should need to push themselves to come up with an imaginative way to go beyond what is asked. This pushes them outside of their comfort zone and encourages creativity. This resourcefulness will undoubtedly help them later in their future workplace.

Still not convinced? Just give rubrics a shot the next time you assign a project, paper, essay, etc. You can even ease your transition by using a brilliant website aptly called Roobrix, a tool that helps educators avoid grading errors when scoring rubrics. You can quickly input the levels, the number of criteria, and your minimum passing grade, and Roobrix will give you the student's grade with the click of a button. Once you see that the feedback you are giving your students leads to improvement in their work, I promise you will never turn back.

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Every educator feels pretty darn cool the first few times they grade students' work. What a powerful feeling it ignites in us, right? However, the reality of how much time we have to spend grading sets in quickly and the task becomes more and more monotonous.

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This blog discusses how summative assessment can benefit students learning while also making note of what bad summative assessment looks like.

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Understanding the meaning and function of summative assessment helps clarify its role within education as a critical component of bridging teaching and learning. In this post, we take a closer look at summative assessment's qualities with the end goal of ensuring that summative assessment supports learning and informs teaching.

Assessment is a term that describes tests, quizzes, exams, and assignments that measure student learning. Each of these methodologies can provide students and teachers with insights. Educators receive data on what students have and have not learned and gain observations into teaching efficacy and exam design. Students, in turn, recognize any learning gaps they might have, and when they receive feedback, understand next steps to further learning.

The most high-stakes type of assessment is called summative assessment. Summative assessment often comes at the endpoint of learning, whether at the end of a unit, course, or curriculum, serving largely as a pure evaluation of knowledge.

It's easy to consider summative assessments as a final chapter to learning, but summative assessments can also act as a milestone and inform next steps for both educators and students. By examining the definition of summative assessment as well as its capabilities, educators can embrace its strengths, bolster its shortcomings, and foster learning.

Summative assessment definition

Summative assessment is a specific type of assessment that evaluates learning and offers little opportunity for providing student feedback because of its positioning at the end of a learning unit. They are usually high-stakes, contributing to a large portion of a student's course grade (e.g., final exams) or an exam that has a high impact on a student's educational outcome. (e.g., standardized exams or entrance exams). Summative assessments include heavily weighted midterm exams, final exams, licensure tests, and standardized exams like A levels in the UK, SATs in the United States, Matriculation Exams in Finland, National Boards in India, or the CSAT in South Korea.

In such a high-stakes context, failing or struggling on summative assessments can negate student effort in other areas of study. On the other hand, summative assessment can be an effective tool to evaluate student knowledge and in the realm of licensure and certification exams, determine qualification for beginning a career.

Just for context: Formative assessment definition

While we aim to focus discussion on summative assessment, it's important to describe another type of assessment to provide context; formative assessments not only evaluate learning but provide feedback to students and data to instructors. While formative assessments may or may not be given a grade, they most certainly further learning and occur throughout the course to support student learning needs, and often provide a safe space for failure. Formative assessments include assignments, tests, in-class activities, quizzes, and even midterm exams when they include feedback and opportunities for instructor intervention.

Best practices in formative assessment include providing timely and actionable feedback to students before the next assessment ( Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

Formative and summative assessment

While formative assessment is the measurement and support of learning as it takes place, summative assessments are evaluations of what a student has learned at the end of a given period (e.g., semester or training course). By assessing students at the end of a module, course, or curriculum, educators gain insight into how well their students have mastered the content and how effective their teaching methods were.

Even though summative assessments are situated at a point where students will find it hard to action results, data from summative assessments can still be used to inform curriculum planning and teaching, as well as any future exam adjustments.

That said, when possible, it's important to balance formative and summative assessments within a term or curriculum. Fortifying summative assessments with prior formative assessments can support a student's educational journey. Students who understand what they know and what they need to know in order to move forward are more likely to be prepared for final evaluation. Furthermore, preparing students for final evaluation with frequent opportunities to fail safely and receive feedback reduces stress, increases learning outcomes, and can mitigate academic misconduct.

Can summative assessments have formative qualities?

While every type of assessment has its function to evaluate, every type of assessment, too, can be maximized for learning and teaching. Mid-course exams, for example, have the potential for both summative and formative qualities, serving to evaluate mastery (summative) and provide feedback to promote student learning (formative).

Without feedback, a midterm exam is purely summative. And while a summative component to a mid-course exam is reasonable, there is a lot more potential to them. It is important to provide feedback on mid-course exams so that students understand what they do and do not know and have the tools to bridge learning gaps for the next assessment and ultimately their final exam.

When assessments are provided with timely and actionable feedback, students have the information they need to facilitate their own learning; in this way, even high-stakes midterm exams can pivot towards formative learning opportunities for students. Additionally, summative assessments contain information critical for teacher and curriculum intervention as well as future exam design.

Providing students with feedback from summative assessments

While formative assessments hinge on providing students with immediate feedback to help with the learning process, summative assessments happen after the student learning occurs. However, this doesn't mean that communicating students' performance is any less important.

For students to understand what content they have mastered and which topics might need additional study time, they need a detailed breakdown of their performance.

Categorizing summative assessment questions can give instructors the granular performance data they (and their students) need. By tagging exam items to course topics or learning objectives, faculty can provide the detailed feedback students need to be more focused in their study efforts.

Summative assessments are an important part of the assessment process and are incredibly valuable to both students and faculty. By ensuring high-stakes exams are secure, and providing students with performance feedback, educators can gain insight into how well students have learned the content and how well instructors have presented it.

When are summative assessments useful?

Summative assessments evaluate content mastery. Generally, they are end-of-course or end-of-year exams; however, these are not the only applicable uses of summative assessments. Evaluating student learning could also come at the end of a chapter or learning module with mid-course exams.

Summative exams can also be multi-functional, as they, like all assessments, are rich with data. When item analysis and psychometrics accompany summative assessment, instruction is bolstered. When an assessment occurs at the end of a course or year or curriculum, data insights help educators make adjustments to teaching and curriculum so that future learning can be bolstered. When category-tagging is employed in tools like ExamSoft, educators can pinpoint student preparation for things like licensure exams. And conducting item analysis can inform effective exam design.

When are summative assessments harmful?

Summative assessments are by nature, high-stakes, and very stressful.

Who hasn't woken from a nightmare in panic about missing or failing a final exam, even decades out from school? The reality that summative assessments can make or break academic success is deeply implanted in our psyche.

While there is little disagreement among educators about the need for or utility of summative assessments, debates and disagreements tend to center on issues of fairness and effectiveness, especially when summative-assessment results are used for high-stakes purposes.

Fair and inclusive assessments uphold accurate assessments. When exams are not fair nor inclusive, they become vulnerable to misconduct, resulting in missed learning opportunities. When exams do not cover what was taught, students may feel stressed and vulnerable. These missed opportunities can compound and widen learning gaps.

Assessments need to contain a variety of formats and question styles to measure different components of learning and include different learning styles. Summative assessments, when poorly designed, reward memorization rather than deep understanding of concepts. Encouraging competition between students, which can happen when grading on a curve, can also increase stress and decrease fairness.

Additionally, when test-takers are not sure how they will be evaluated, summative assessments can be unfair and inaccurate. Providing rubrics to students and graders ensures clarity of expectations and ensuing measurement of learning.

When summative assessments are stressful, do not accurately measure learning, aren't preceded with learning opportunities beforehand, and/or don't test what has been taught, they also become more vulnerable to academic misconduct and shortcut solutions like cheating, plagiarism, and AI Writing misuse.

Keeping assessments secure

Assessments are a checkpoint for student learning and teaching efficacy; consequently, accurate student responses are critical to increasing learning outcomes.

Most summative assessments are given with the understanding that the student's score counts toward their final grade. As such, keeping these secure from academic dishonesty is paramount to providing a fair experience for all exam-takers. Though many educational institutions are moving to computer-based testing (CBT), taking exams on laptops or other devices brings a new list of potential security issues, such as access to the internet or other applications during an exam. An effective way to ensure exam integrity is testing software that does not allow use of the internet during an exam and prevents students from accessing other applications on their device.

Preventing academic dishonesty by blocking exam-takers' information sources isn't the only point to consider; ensuring students don't share assessment items is also a concern. Once a test question is compromised, it's no longer a valid measurement of student learning. Thus, keeping questions secure is vital.

Assessment security is a focus of Professor Phillip Dawson, an authority on assessment security from Deakin University in Australia, who defines assessment security as: "Measures taken to harden assessment against attempts to cheat. This includes approaches to detect and evidence attempts to cheat, as well as measures to make cheating more difficult."

Dawson suggests a multilayered approach to assessment design, with seven standards for assessment security that institutions ought to consider:

1. Coverage across a program - how much of a degree should be secured?

2. Authentication - how do we ensure the student is who they say they are?

3. Control of circumstances - how can we be sure the task was done in the intended circumstances?

4. Difficulty to cheat metrics - we need to know how hard it may be to cheat a task.

5. Detection accuracy metrics - we need to know if our detection methods work.

6. Proof metrics - we need to be able to prove cases of cheating.

7. Prevalence metrics - we need to know approximate rates of undetected, detected, and proven cheating (Dawson, 2021).

According to Professor Roseanna Bourke, Director of Educational Psychology programme and Institute of Education at Massey University, there is a link between student cheating and student understanding and investment in the assigned tasks; when students don't understand questions and lack confidence, learning itself becomes the barrier ( Bourke, Integrity Matters, n.d.).

Providing support to students throughout a course or curriculum mitigates academic dishonesty in summative assessments. When students feel seen and supported with formative feedback in their educational journey, they are less likely to cheat. Additionally, rubrics can make clear the purpose of each question.

How can summative assessments benefit student learning?

As stated, summative assessment is useful when the data exchange is maximized and accurate. Not only should it provide information about content mastery to instructors, it can also act as a reservoir of statistics about learning trends, item analysis, and exam effectiveness. Finally, and when possible, summative exams can take on formative qualities when feedback is provided. All of these data points directly benefit student learning.

Because it is a platform to demonstrate a culmination of knowledge, designing summative assessments is particularly critical to make the test accessible and inclusive for all different types of learners, and thus promote accurate measurement and data insights. Exam design principles include:

Test what has been taught; aligning summative assessment with instruction models and promotes integrity for students.

Design assessments that focus on measuring both breadth and depth of student knowledge and consider eliminating components that do not inform learning. Offer a variety of assessment formats. Multiple-choice questions can effectively breadth of knowledge in a limited time while short-answer and long-answer formats can evaluate higher-order thinking.

Offering a variety of formats and questions styles within a summative assessment can also accommodate different learning styles. When diverse formats are offered, a larger spectrum of learning can be assessed. Additionally, diverse formats provide different ways for students to demonstrate their learning.

And consider eliminating grading on a curve, which can increase competition between students, some of whom may be cheating (UC Berkeley, 2020). Researchers Schinske and Tanner state, "Moving away from curving sets the expectation that all students have the opportunity to achieve the highest possible grade" (Schinske & Tanner, 2014).

A rubric, too, benefits students by clarifying expectations and acts as added assurance that tests align to previously-communicated learning goals.

How can summative assessments inform exam design?

Finally, the summative assessment itself is a living document, one that can be continuously optimized.

Analyze student responses to ensure assessments are fair, and to examine answer patterns to see if shortcut solutions have been utilized. Item analysis, or formally examining student responses and patterns, can show whether or not summative assessments are accurately assessing student knowledge. The data (Did every student get one particular question wrong? Did every student get one particular question correct? What kinds of answers are your test questions eliciting? Did you get the answers you expected?) can inform both exam design and teaching. Furthermore, item analysis supports exam robustness by highlighting questions on exams that may need adjustment.

Category tagging, a feature in ExamSoft assessment software, can offer more in-depth insights into future testing. A nursing program, for instance, can evaluate readiness for certification and the strength of curriculum to prepare students for standardized exams. Of course, category tagging can also fortify summative assessment within the curriculum.

Conclusion: What is summative assessment?

In conclusion, summative assessments function largely as a way to evaluate learning at critical learning junctions, whether at the end of a term, end of a curriculum, or for advancement into the next level of schooling or licensure. The nature of summative assessments make them high-stakes, sometimes to the extent that they can negatively impact all prior learning. Moreover, they lack the opportunity for feedback, given their position in the educational journey.

That said, summative assessments are not wholly an endpoint. They are an intersection rich with data for educators to inform teaching, curriculum, and exam design. For students, too, there can be opportunities to learn, either by feedback or via data analysis, their own learning gaps and how to bridge them.

When educators maximize the potential of summative assessment, they can foster learning.

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What is summative assessment? How to further learning with final exams

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A close look at summative assessment's definition and qualities with the end goal of ensuring that summative assessment supports learning and informs teaching

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Benefits of Using Formative Assessment to Increase Student Progress

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Benefits of Using Formative Assessment to Increase Student Progress

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This article explains the strengths and benefits of formative assessment and how they can increase student understanding and learning.

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RESOURCE LIBRARY

The role of formative assessments to gauge student understanding has become more important than ever following COVID-related disruptions, including significant learning gaps in reading and mathematics . But it can be tough to switch from being test-oriented to learning-oriented.

Focusing on learning-oriented techniques like formative assessment can help address unfinished learning. That's because these diagnostic check-ins are essential to guiding lesson planning and adjusting instruction to support students' progress and improvement.

The Strengths of Formative Assessment

When teachers constantly monitor student progress and adjust instruction to ensure continuous improvement, they find it easier and more predictable to progress toward meeting the standards on summative assessments.

By understanding exactly what their students know before and during instruction, educators have much more power to improve student mastery of the subject matter than if they find out after a lesson or unit is complete.

The strength of formative assessment lies in the critical information it provides about student comprehension throughout the learning process and the opportunity it gives educators to provide students with timely and action-oriented feedback. With formative assessment, educators can adjust instruction so that every student has a chance to learn and re-learn.

The students performing on the outer edges of the standard curve-the struggling and the gifted-particularly benefit from formative assessment. These students have learning needs that are often unique and specific, and the teacher needs timely data to address them. Additionally, using consistent formative assessment to address learning gaps -regardless of the cause-ensures that teachers can provide timely remediation.

9 Benefits of Formative Assessment

The benefits of well-implemented formative assessment include:

Monitoring student progress regularly helps keep learning goals top of mind so students have a clear target to work towards, and teachers can help clear up misunderstandings before students get off track.

Providing students and teachers with regular feedback on progress toward their goals is the primary function of formative assessment that will aid in increasing academic achievement. Formative assessment helps students close the gap between their current knowledge and learning goals. 1

Descriptive feedback should highlight gaps in understanding and specifically inform students on how they can improve their learning rather than listing what they got wrong, thus facilitating a reciprocal learning process between teachers and students. 2   3

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9 Benefits of Using Formative Assessment to Increase Student Progress

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Learn about the benefits of using formative assessment to gauge understanding and increase student progress within any learning environment.

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This handout has different assessment ideas for differentiating assessment for students.

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Differentiation Ideas Summary for Final Exam

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This article discusses how feedback can allow students to know where they are in their learning and why.

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The Importance of Feedback | Learning A-Z

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Providing constructive feedback to individual students leads to positive learning outcomes, and the quality of feedback matters much more than quantity.

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This blog post discusses proficiency scales and how they are used in schools.

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Lately, as I’ve engaged in conversations in person, webinars, works, and social media, I’ve noticed hesitancy about last level on proficiency scales. You know the one. It’s called Exte…