Assessment Explainer

What Is Formative Assessment? An EdWeek Video Explainer

By Catherine Gewertz — February 23, 2017 1 min read
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Do you think you have a pretty good understanding of formative assessment? If not, you have a lot of company. Many people are confused about this kind of testing, and they often define it very differently.

We called on a classroom teacher to help define and explain formative assessment, and we made a neat little video explainer for you. Take a look; it’s embedded in the top of this blog post.

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.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the High School & Beyond blog.