There’s a lot of confusion about what formative assessments actually are and what they do. My colleague Catherine Gewertz interviewed Meghan Pazmino, a math coach at Ross Elementary School in Washington.
Catherine wrote on her blog High School & Beyond:
Assessment is a hot topic, of course, but most of those conversations are about summative testing, the kind you do when learning is over, like at the end of the school year. There's also interim testing, which tries to measure how well students learned specific, smaller chunks of instruction. So where does formative assessment fit into that scheme? Watch the video to find out. For a deeper dive, check out EdWeek's special report on formative assessment. It tells you that lots of people are searching for clarity on formative assessment. And it supplies perspectives of experts to help you find the answers.
A couple of years ago, Teacher blogger Larry Ferlazzo asked renowned educators about effective formative assessment techniques. Read their answers about what conditions must be met to make formative assessments powerful, and how to engage students through the formative assessment process.
Even More Reading on Formative Assessments: