Formative and Summative Assessments

This article focuses on the use formative and summative assessments for evaluating student progress. Discussion is presented on the positive and negative aspects of each, their commonalities, as well as how they differ from each other. Examples of formative and summative assessments are also included. Comments on assessment for district reporting and high stakes testing are also provided.

Overview

There are two major types of assessments being used in classrooms today-summative and formative. These assessments have very obvious differences but also share some similarities depending on how they are administered and evaluated. Summative assessments are intended to summarize what students have learned and occur after instruction has been completed at the end of a predetermined point in time or instructional component. It can occur at the end of the school year or term; at the end of an instructional unit or chapter; and at the end of elementary, middle or high school. Formative assessments are generally considered part of the instructional process and are intended to provide information needed to help instructors adjust their instruction and help students learn while instruction is occurring. Formative assessment is not graded and is used as an ongoing diagnostic tool, which means it should occur regularly and the results should be shared with students in a timely manner in order to be effective. Any adjustments that need to be made in instruction are intended to ensure that all students meet pre-established learning goals within a specific timeframe.

Similarities & Differences of Each Assessment

There are quite a few similarities between formative and summative assessments. Both assessments require active instructor involvement to be effective. It also does not matter what kind of assessment is used; instructors must be able to help motivate their students to learn and get them excited about the learning process. However, the similarities stem more from how the two need to be codependent in order to produce the desired results for students. The formative assessment must align with the summative to produce valid grades and scores. This can be accomplished by reviewing student work and looking at past test questions and answers to determine any areas of weakness, and then successfully addressing them before the summative assessment is administered.

There are a few distinct differences between formative and summative assessments. The primary goal of summative assessment is to be able to provide an overall measure of student performance at a particular point in time in a grade or score format. This report can be given to parents, districts, states, and others and can have serious consequences attached to it for both the student and the school, such as students not being promoted to the next grade, not getting into their college of choice or the school not receiving funding. The primary goal of formative assessment is to provide feedback within the classroom with no real consequences attached. Another way to distinguish between formative and summative assessments is that formative assessments can be considered a type of practice for students because they are not being graded, whereas summative assessments depend completely on a grade or score. Formative assessments depend on student involvement and feedback to be effective, and summative assessments do not.

Examples of Formative & Summative Assessments

Almost any assessment can be either formative or summative, depending on whether a grade or score is given and recorded and whether or not feedback and reflection are involved in the process. Some of the more familiar examples of summative assessments include tests, final exams, graded projects, work portfolios, PSAT exams and college entrance exams. Some examples of formative assessments, which can be both formal and informal, include ungraded quizzes, instructor questioning and observations, draft work, and portfolio reviews. Other examples of formative assessments include “reviewing homework and classroom work for errors or misunderstandings; observing students as they read, work with others, carry out assignments, or solve problems; talking with students” (Nitko, 1994); and listening to student responses during a lesson. Instructors may also give a pretest before beginning a unit or chapter to determine students' existing knowledge. A post-test would work as a formative assessment if the knowledge of the completed unit or chapter is necessary for understanding the next unit or chapter. This can be especially true for mathematics where one concept can build on all previously learned concepts and a solid foundation is crucial for any future success. Any opportunity for revisions on tests or any other type of assessment that gives students a chance to work through, think about, and eventually understand an area they did not understand or were not able to clearly articulate before, is a type of formative assessment.

Some formative assessment ideas that can work for practically any grade are having students write a paragraph, having students keep a journal, asking text-based questions, checking students' notebooks, conducting impromptu quizzes, creating and handing out worksheets, assigning homework, conducting oral questioning and having all students respond, having daily review questions before beginning the new lesson, and having students compare answers.

Some ideas for summative assessment include creating a newsletter, critiquing an article or book, having students create their own books, assigning research papers, having students present to the rest of the class, having students analyze a book or specific text, and basically assigning anything that can be graded once students have a clear understanding of the grading rubric and what is expected of them.

Often, predictive—or diagnostic—assessment is used before more formal assessments. These can be considered a combination of both summative and formative assessment that has become more prevalent with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Predictive/diagnostic assessments may also be known as pre-assessments and are designed to closely follow what will more than likely be asked on a summative assessment. The intent for using predictive/diagnostic assessments is to predict how well students will perform on high-stakes tests used to meet NCLB guidelines and state standards. Diagnostic reports can show specific errors that students make so teachers can target instruction to classroom needs, which makes it simpler to increase student performance and help schools, districts, and states meet their achievement goals. In fact, at least one publishing company has developed predictive assessments that are specifically aligned to each state's high-stakes tests. A purely diagnostic assessment can be used to profile students' interests and help determine their preferred learning styles. They can also help instructors plan their instruction and develop curriculum by helping to determine whether or not classroom instruction is closely aligned with federal and/or state high-stakes tests. Since these assessments are intended for diagnostic/predictive purposes, they are generally not graded.

Viewpoints

Formative Assessment

Positive Aspects of Formative Assessment

Provides feedback to Instructors & Students

Formative assessments occur at the same time as instruction. This means that formative assessments can provide specific feedback to both instructors and students regarding each student's learning, thus allowing instructors to modify and improve instruction midstream. Formative assessment can provide immediate, contextualized feedback. With formative assessment, there is improved feedback between students and their teachers; and students become actively involved in their own learning, which can help stimulate student motivation, engagement, and learning. Instructors can use the feedback attained to adapt their teaching practices to specific student needs. Since formative assessment does occur concurrently with instruction, teachers can determine what concepts and skills have been mastered and revisit as often as necessary those concepts and skills that have not been mastered. Formative assessment can also influence other factors that come into play when discussing student achievement. When instructors determine that they are simply not reaching the class using their own preferred teaching techniques and methods, they are forced to rethink how they teach. Attempting to use different techniques to reach students with different learning styles challenges instructors and keeps them engaged in the learning process since formative assessment provides immediate feedback about any success or failure that any particular technique may produce. Evaluation of all the feedback received from various formative assessments can show where there are deficiencies and strengths. This can help the instructor arrange for additional resources to help those students who are not thriving or doing well in class instead of waiting until after the high-stakes test.

Reveals Learning Gap & Development Delays

Formative assessments may also reveal that there is a learning gap since it may be assumed that students know concepts that were taught in previous classes, for example, in mathematics and algebra classes. It is generally assumed that students who have completed basic math classes and were passed on to an algebra class understand the basic tenets of mathematics, know their multiplication tables and can solve simple fraction problems. Formative assessment can quickly show whether or not that is the case. In an ideal situation, those students who have a large knowledge gap in what they should know to what they actually do know could be worked on separately or they could be moved to a pre-algebra class early enough so that they can succeed there, enabling the algebra class to cover all the material they should during the term. Formative assessments may also reveal that students know more than what was originally assumed, thus enabling the instructor to move forward at a faster pace and making it possible to cover more material than was originally intended.

An example of this is a computer class for developmentally delayed students. An instructor could have developed lesson plans beginning with the very basics of computers, such as how to turn a computer on, how to navigate through the operating system, how to play solitaire to get them comfortable using a mouse, and how to shut the system down only to walk into class the very first day and find all the students already have their computers turned on and are checking their email, playing games, writing papers, etc. This informal assessment indicates that the instructor needs to quickly revise her lesson plan, skip over most of what she was going to cover during the first few class sessions, and add more challenging concepts and skills to the lesson plan to make it a rewarding class for the students.

Provides Timely Feedback

Timely feedback is a vital component of formative assessments and one of the biggest reasons formative assessments can be so effective. By providing feedback to students, teachers give the information they need to help them understand the subject matter. Student-provided feedback gives instructors the data they need to adjust their teaching strategies and make the best use of instructional time. Feedback can also help promote cognition. Teacher-supplied feedback can help students learn the course content, how they learn, and how well they have learned what has been presented. By pinpointing deficiencies and reporting to students in a timely manner, students are able to focus on what they still have not mastered instead of spending time going over material that they have already mastered. Instructors who can draw their students in and get them to engage in reflective feedback can produce greater educational achievement. Anything that requires students to write, discuss, question, or synthesize information can help the instructor determine how each student learns and how their minds work. This can help instructors adapt their instructional presentation and methods to try to make the classroom a more effective learning environment conducive for everyone.

Help Evaluate Knowledge & Understanding of Specific Subject Matter

Formative assessments can help students evaluate their own knowledge and understanding of specific subject matter. They also allow them to practice their skills and only work on those concepts that they have not yet mastered. Formative assessments can also help students understand the expectations of their instructors, which include the level of competence and quality of work required to succeed in the class. True formative assessment helps students do all this without fear of being penalized or labeled because the assessments are not graded and will not show up anywhere on their academic records. For both parties, formative assessment, with its vital feedback component, helps encourage interaction between teacher and student, making it a more comfortable and less stressful learning environment for students who will be able to do well on all high-stakes tests that come their way, confident in their ability to do well because they have had feedback on their performance throughout the entire term or school year.

Drawbacks of Formative Assessment

Dependency on Understanding of Assessment Process

There are also some drawbacks to using formative assessments. Although instructors may record the results of formative assessments for their own purposes, such as to help track student progress, these results should not factor into any report card grading or similar results. Also, the effectiveness of formative assessment relies on whether students truly understand the learning gap between what they currently know and where they need to be to have true mastery of the material being presented. Another factor is even if they do know where they currently are and what they need to learn, they must be willing to put in the work necessary to close the achievement gap. Therefore, students must be willing participants in the feedback process and also willing to do the work necessary to gain the knowledge, which could mean a lot of work and extra remediation for them.

Unfair Advantage to Students

Using formative assessment, an instructor requires students to continually revisit and improve their work until it reaches what is deemed to be acceptable. This can give students an opportunity to master key concepts and skills but it can also be considered unfair to those students who are capable of completing the work accurately and on time, when everyone ultimately ends up receiving the same grade for the assignment. This can make those higher-achieving students wonder why they are working so diligently to complete projects on time and putting in the effort to get them correct the first time if their classmates end up getting the same score for seemingly far less effort, thus losing their incentive to produce high-quality work and make the effort the first time around.

Negative Time Factor

Formative assessment can also be time consuming for instructors who make extensive use of it. It can also be very stressful for them because in order for any feedback to be useful, it must be valid and given in a timely manner, which can create a lot of after-hours work for the instructor. While there are some instances where students can mark their own or other students' papers, the instructor still has to put in a lot more effort and time for formative assessments than summative assessments require. Instructors also must be proficient in providing open, direct, and constructive feedback to all students in order for formative assessment to be most effective. In addition, there could be additional resources required, which can pose a monetary burden on schools and districts that they are simply not capable of fulfilling.

Questionable Reliability of Source of Information

Another possible drawback of formative assessment is the reliability of the information instructors attain. Anonymity can help provide more reliable data, but with it comes the need for more money to buy the necessary equipment and programs for the assessments. Most students have always seemed to have a natural reluctance for volunteering to answer questions in class, and an instructor really does not get reliable information about what the class as a whole knows when only a few students answer the questions. Therefore, students could be provided with computers that are directly connected to the instructor's computer, and the instructor can require everyone to answer the questions. Another possibility is providing small dry-erase boards for students to write their answers on and then show them to the instructor without their classmates seeing their response. The instructor can then display the answers, so students can see what their classmates thought the answer was and how many students actually got the question correct. These solutions cost money that the school may not have available to spend.

Summative Assessment

Positive Aspects of Summative Assessment

Meets Evaluative Requirements

While formative assessments should not be graded and should not count toward any permanent evaluation, summative assessments are evaluative and allow instructors to condense the results and report them as a score or grade. This gives students who may not take formative assessments very seriously pause for thought, since these assessments do count and can be seen by their parents. In younger grades, these assessments may be sent home for a parental signature or shown during parent/teacher conferences. In higher grades, the culmination of these assessments may be seen on grade reports requiring a parent or guardian's signature and discussed separately at parent/teacher conferences.

Meets NCLB Requirements

Summative assessments are necessary for meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The data that can be culled from summative assessments can be used by teachers, parents, principals, district administrators, and states to compare student scores and progress by comparing age, gender, ethnicity, schools, etc., which can assist in evaluating curricula and help determine if certain schools need improvement-assuming that the school's curricula is properly aligned with the assessment. Summative assessments should correspond to a state's curriculum for NCLB purposes and help determine Adequate Yearly Progress, which is something formative assessments cannot do.

Drawbacks of Summative Assessment

Time Lag in Assessment

One of the most agreed upon drawbacks of summative assessments is that waiting until the end of a period, chapter, term, or year to determine how well students are doing and how much they have learned is simply too late because there is nothing that can be done to help remediate any learning deficiencies. Grading or scoring plays a major role in why schools use summative assessments. However, the purposes of grading are varied. Grading can be used to:

• Certify and measure mastery of subjects and specific skills

• To indicate the effort students put forth

• To compare students in terms of their competence, progress, and effort

• To identify students' learning strengths and needs

• Group students for instructional purposes

• To determine a program's effectiveness

• To motivate students to learn

• To provide feedback to students, parents, districts, states, and policymakers

• To determine grade promotion, graduation eligibility, honors, awards, and student rank

• To determine accountability in student achievement.

Poor Informative Grading Process

In order for grades or scores to be a truly useful instrument for students, parents, teachers, schools, districts, and states, the grades or scores need to be put in the context of 'compared to what?' A single letter grade and even a more detailed, informative grading process do not really do the job because those concerned still do not know whether what is reported is a relative or absolute achievement if comparative data is not provided in terms of school, state, and/or national norms. Simply using class, school, or district norms can be misleading because there is no way of determining whether or not each student's performance level is appropriate or if the performance is just superior in that class, school, or district but is subpar when it is compared to students in the best schools in the country.

Doubtful Alignment with School Curriculum

If summative assessments are used to evaluate schools on a statewide or national level and the school's curriculum does not align well with those assessments, then the reliability of the test results of what students have learned is severely compromised, since those assessments may not be evaluating what the students have learned. Also, instructors that solely use summative assessments tend to teach in a more instructor-centered environment, meaning they are more apt to lecture and just try to read their class and judge using their own experiences whether their students understand what they are trying to convey to them; this can be far from reliable.

Since most of these examples, with the exception of the national, high-stakes tests can be used as a formative or summative assessment, it is important for instructors to remember what they would like to accomplish. Simply stated, do they need to assign scores or grades and assess what students currently know at a particular point in time, or are they looking for information needed to help them adjust their instruction and help students learn while the instruction is occurring? The appropriate assessment depends on how it should be used, and what it should measure.

Terms & Concepts

Assessment: Educational assessment is the process of determining the amount of information students have retained.

Cognition: Cognition is the act or process of knowing; knowledge.

High-stakes test: A high-stakes test is the use of particular test scores to make decisions that have important consequences for individuals, schools, school districts, and/or states and can include high school graduation, promotion to the next grade, resource allocation, and instructor retention.

Learning styles: Learning styles are the different ways people learn. Most students learn through visual experiences, while others prefer learning through auditory or tactile methods, or a combination of the three.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB): The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is the latest reauthorization and a major overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the major federal law regarding K-12 education.

Portfolio: A portfolio is a systematic collection of teacher observations and student work representing the student's progress and activities of a particular class. They can hold complete works as well as ones that are not yet completed in order to show a project’s different stages.

Reflection: Reflection is the process of deriving meaning and knowledge from an experience and to consciously connect classroom learning to the experience.

Rubric: A rubric is a set of ordered categories to which a given piece of work can be compared. It is a guide that shows how what learners do will be assessed and graded.

Valid Feedback: Valid feedback concerns whether the feedback produces the desired result and is well founded and sound.

Bibliography

Atkin, J.M., Black, P. & Coffey, J. Eds. (2001) The relationship between formative and summative assessment-in the classroom and beyond. In Classroom assessment and the National Science Education Standards. Retrieved June 19, 2007, from

Biggs, J. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning: A role for summative assessment? Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5, 103. Retrieved June 19, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Boston, C. (2003). High school report cards. Washington, D.C.: Office of Educational Research and Improvement. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 48 1815).

Dyer, K. (2024, June 13). Understanding formative, summative, and interim assessment and their role in student learning. nwea. Retrieved August 16, https://www.nwea.org/blog/2024/understanding-formative-interim-summative-assessments-role-student-learning/

Garrison, C. & Ehringhaus, M. (n.d.). Formative and summative assessments in the classroom. Retrieved June 19, 2007, from

Harlen, W. (2005). Formative and summative assessment-a harmonious relationship? Retrieved June 19, 2007, from

Irving, K. (2007). Formative assessment improves student learning. NSTA Reports, 18 , 6-8. Retrieved June 19, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Formative vs. summative assessment: impacts on academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill. Lang Test Asia. Retrieved August 16, 2024, from National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9468254/

McTighe, J. & O'Connor, K. (2005). Seven practices for effective learning. Educational Leadership, 63 , 10-17. Retrieved June 19, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Minneapolis Public Schools. (2005). Formative and summative assessment ideas. Retrieved June 19, 2007, from

Nitko, A. (1994). Curriculum-based criterion-referenced continuous assessment: A framework for the concepts and procedures of using continuous assessment for formative and summative evaluation of student learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 37 7199). Retrieved June 19, 2007 from Education Resources Information Center.

Rolfe, I. & McPherson, J. (1995). Formative assessments: How am I doing? Lancet, 345 (8953), 837. Retrieved June 19, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Salend, S. & Garrick Duhaney, L. (n.d.) Grading students in inclusive settings. Retrieved May 8, 2007, from

Sato, M. & Atkin, J. (2007). Supporting change in classroom assessment. Educational Leadership, 64 , 76-79. Retrieved June 19, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Starkman, N. (2006). Building a better student. T H E Journal, 33 , 41-46. Retrieved June 19, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Voelkel, S. (2013). Combining the formative with the summative: The development of a two-stage online test to encourage engagement and provide personal feedback in large classes. Research in Learning Technology,211-18.Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Wenjie, Q., & Chunling, Z. (2013). The analysis of summative assessment and formative assessment and their roles in college English assessment system. Journal of Language Teaching & Research, 4, 335-339. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.

Suggested Reading

Ainsworth, L. & Viegut, D. (2006). Common Formative Assessments: How to Connect Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Anderson, L. (2003). Classroom Assessment: Enhancing the Quality of Teacher Decision Making. Florence, KY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Butler, S. & McMunn, N. (2006). A Teacher's Guide to Classroom Assessment: Understanding and Using Assessment to Improve Student Learning. Hoboken, NY: Jossey-Bass.

Clarke, S. (2001). Unlocking Formative Assessment. London, UK: Hodder & Stoughton.

Hall, K. & Burke, W. (2004). Making Formative Assessment Work. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press.