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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, , at the University of California, Los Angeles, appeared on a panel here last week to discuss a intended as a reminder of what formative assessment should be.
Her comments were aimed directly at that are working to design assessment systems for new 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鈥攁nd the way they purport to gauge student knowledge鈥攁re the subject of keen attention.
Ms. Heritage argued that the two consortia lack 鈥渢he right mind-set鈥� because they depict formative assessment as sets of tools, or 鈥渕ini-summative鈥� tests.
Referring to a body of work that sought to define formative assessment during the past two decades, including the influential 1998 article, by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, she said formative assessment is not a series of quizzes or a 鈥渕ore frequent, finer-grained鈥� interim assessment, but a continuous process embedded in adults鈥� teaching and students鈥� learning.
Teachers use formative assessment to guide instruction when they clearly define what students should know, periodically gauge their understanding, and give them descriptive feedback鈥攏ot simply a test score or a grade鈥攖o help them reach those goals, Ms. Heritage said. Students engage in the process by understanding how their work must evolve and developing self-assessment and peer-assessment strategies to help them get there, she said.
Ms. Heritage鈥檚 comments echo others鈥� concerns that the meaning of formative assessment has been hijacked as the standards movement has pressed states into large-scale testing systems. The result, Ms. Heritage said, is a 鈥減aradigm of measurement鈥� instead of one of learning.
While summative tests can provide valuable information for decisions about programs or curriculum, she said, the most valuable assessment for instruction is the continuous, deeply engaged feedback loop of formative assessment. Channeling money into building teachers鈥� skills in that technique is a better investment in student achievement, she said, than paying for more test design.
Technique Misunderstood?
Michael Cohen, the president of Achieve, a Washington-based group that is the project manager for the consortium, said his organization鈥檚 primary aim is to design a better summative assessment, and is not creating formative assessments as part of that package. By clearly defining performance standards, however, his group鈥檚 summative tests can 鈥減rovide a context鈥� for good formative-assessment practice, Mr. Cohen said during the panel discussion.
The executive director of the other consortium, called , said his group envisions formative assessments not as a tool, but as a 鈥渨ay of doing business, a way of interacting with students,鈥� so it is designing a set of resources for teachers to use in that instructional feedback loop.
鈥淚f that point wasn鈥檛 made clear in our proposal, that鈥檚 an unfortunate misunderstanding,鈥� Joe Willhoft said in a phone interview. 鈥淥ne of the three legs of our plan is exactly that: professional development,鈥� along with interim assessments and adaptive summative tests.
Other members of the panel, organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers, which is supporting states as they design new assessments, urged better training of preservice and in-service teachers in using formative assessment. Many teachers think they are using the technique, but they fundamentally misunderstand it, said Stuart Kahl, the co-founder of Measured Progress, a Dover, N.H.-based assessment designer.
鈥淭here are teachers who say, 鈥極h, I do formative; I quiz them every day,鈥欌�� he joked.
Sarah McManus, the chief of testing and policy operations for the North Carolina education department, said her agency is helping teachers learn formative assessment by posting modules online. But states must devote resources to thorough, ongoing professional development to build the skills in their teachers, she said.
Mastering formative assessment carries profound implications for changing teaching from a top-down process to a more collaborative one, said Caroline Wylie, a research scientist with the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service who also appeared on the panel.
鈥淭his is not a follow-the-pacing-guide sort of teaching,鈥� Ms. Wylie said.
A teacher quoted at the end of Ms. Heritage鈥檚 paper captures the essence of the paradigm shift Ms. Heritage has in mind.
鈥淚 used to do a lot of explaining, but now I do a lot of questioning,鈥� said the teacher. 鈥淚 used to do a lot of talking, but now I do a lot of listening. I used to think about teaching the curriculum, but now I think about teaching the student.鈥�
