Expert Issues Warning on Formative-Assessment Uses

Comments Aimed at Two State Consortia Working on Common Tests

As educators across the country focus attention on designing new and better ways to gauge what students are learning, they risk distorting the meaning and practice of formative assessment and squandering its potential to enhance teaching and learning, an assessment expert is warning.

Margaret Heritage, the assistant director for professional development at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, or CRESST , at the University of California, Los Angeles, appeared on a panel here last week to discuss a new paper intended as a reminder of what formative assessment should be.

Her comments were aimed directly at two groups of states that are working to design assessment systems for new common standards that have been adopted so far by 41 states. Since the new tests stand to exert a potent influence in classrooms across the country, the type of tests they produce—and the way they purport to gauge student knowledge—are the...