Assessments – Hip, Hip, Hooray!

These definitions of the terms will help you to clarify which are being used and how to identify assessments. Keep in mind, all assessments can and should significantly improve student learning and achievement over time. Formative assessment can be done without any supplies, is intentional and ensures student engagement.

Formative Assessment

Teachers take the pulse of student learning; formative assessments are ‘for learning,’ meaning they allow for changes to instruction so students improve understanding and learning. It can be a pre-assessment or a post-assessment. They do not provide a grade. Formative assessment is used to guide, inform or impact instruction – if it’s not used to improve learning in some way (without taking a grade), then it’s not formative assessment.

Bloom, 1968, 1971

Black & Wiliam, 1998

Common Assessment

Teachers collaboratively develop and administer an assessment; it is written and given to all students at the grade level and then results are analyzed using the data team process. It is not necessarily formative but it can be; it is not necessarily summative but it can be. It can be a pre- or post-assessment; all of these aspects are determined and agreed upon by the data team or teacher team developing the assessment.

Common Formative Assessment

“Not standardized tests, but rather teacher-created, teacher-owned assessments that are collaboratively scored and that provide immediate feedback to students and teachers.”

Douglas Reeves, 2004

Accountability in Action

Founder, The Leadership and Learning Center

  • Assessments for learning administered to all students in grade level or course several times during quarter/year
  • Items collaboratively designed by participating teachers
  • Items represent essential standards only
  • Items designed to match the level of rigor indicated in the targeted essential standards
  • A blend of item types, including selected response (multiple choice, true/false, matching) and constructed-response (short or extended)
  • Student results analyzed in grade-level or course-specific Data Teams to guide instructional planning and delivery

L. Ainsworth and D. Viegut, 2006

Common Formative Assessments:

How to Connect Standards-based Instruction and Assessment, Corwin Press

Common Performance Assessment

Teachers collaboratively develop and administer an assessment that involves both process and product. Students are involved in developing the process and/or product. Given as a team or grade level, results are shared during data teams and indicate next steps and identify areas and students for intervention and further teaching. This type of assessment nets an evaluation or grade of some kind. Tasks are engaging to students and standards-based. It could be a pre- (before learning) but is most likely post-assessment (after learning). It could be a formative assessment, meaning to inform student learning and then allow for instructional interventions or it could be summative, meaning to inform what and how much students know.