Education Week - November 11, 2015 - S4

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EDUCATION WEEK

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November 11, 2015

Understanding Formative Assessment > www.edweek.org/go/formativeassessment-digital

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F orm at i v e-A ssessm en t
M i scon cep t i on s
By C at her in e G ew er t z
So what do you think
the biggest areas of
misunderstanding are about
formative assessment among
educators?
RICHARD J. STIGGINS
Former President Assessment
Training Institute

RICHARD J. STIGGINS is w id ely k n o w n as an
ad vo cat e o f classr o o m assessm en t s in t he ser vice o f
st u d en t lear n in g . H is lo n g car eer in t est in g b r o u g ht
him t o t hat van t ag e p o in t : H e ho ld s a d o ct o r at e
in ed u cat io n al m easu r em en t , has w o r k ed as t he
d ir ect o r o f t est d evelo p m en t at A C T , an d ser ved
o n t he f acu lt y at sever al ed u cat io n scho o ls. A s t he
p r esid en t o f t he A ssessm en t T r ain in g I n st it u t e
in P o r t lan d , O r e., f r o m 1 9 9 2 t o 2 0 1 0 , he help ed
t eacher s d esig n classr o o m - assessm en t t o o ls an d
st r at eg ies.
H e j o in s E du cat i on W eek A sso ciat e E d it o r
Catherine Gewertz to define what formative
assessm en t is- an d isn ' t - an d ex p lain it s p u r p o ses,
benefits, and how it's distinguished from other
t yp es o f assessm en t .
T he in t er view has b een ed it ed f o r sp ace an d
clar it y.
Listen to the complete interview online.
www.edweek.org/go/formativeQA

F orm at i v e-A ssessm en t V i deos
Watch how formativeassessment techniques play
out in the classroom. At right,
Jefferson City, Mo., teacher
Melissa Vernon discusses what
strong and weak models of
writing look like with her 1st
grade class. In the segments
beginning with the third panel,
Crystal Thayer uses a "commit
and toss" activity that allows her
to get a read on her 4th graders'
misunderstandings about
mammals. Thayer teaches
in Lewis County schools
in Tollesboro, Ky.
Watch these videos.
www.edweek.org/go/formativeVideos

STIGGINS: I think one big misunderstanding is among policymakers
at all levels. [It's] the mistaken belief
that somehow annual accountability standardized testing improves
schools. It's not that I'm opposed to
assessment at that level, but the obsessive belief that somehow this is
the application of assessment that
will improve schools flies in the face
of everything we know.
A second misunderstanding is
that people are tending to think
about formative assessment as an
event, rather than a process. The
way we have to think about it is
that we engage in the ongoing, dayto-day classroom-assessment process to give teachers and their students the information they need to
understand what comes next in the
learning. It isn't a one-time event.
There's another misunderstanding-again, a lack of understanding-that may surprise most
people when I mention it. That is
our failure to understand the role
of the emotional dynamics of being
evaluated from the student's point
of view. For formative purposes,
those dynamics have to center

on keeping students believing in
themselves. It isn't merely about
getting teachers more information
so they can make better instructional decisions. Good formative
assessment keeps students believing that success is within reach if
they keep trying.

Tell us a little bit more about
this idea about students being
engaged in the process.
This idea arises from a researcher
and assessment expert in Australia;
his name is Royce Sadler. What he
said to us is, we use formative assessment productively when we use
it in the instructional context to do
three things. One is, keep students
understanding the achievement target they're aspiring to. The second
is, use the assessment process to
help them understand where they
are now in relation to that expectation. And the third is, use the assessment process to help students
understand how to close the gap
between the two. Do you see where
the locus of control resides? It's with
the student.

Should formative assessments
ever be graded? Because we
certainly hear about them
being graded.
Here's how I think about it. Anything and everything that students
do by way of their work, or their

performance, needs to be evaluated,
to be sure, in terms of very specific,
preset performance criteria that
are known to the teacher and the
student. So for example, in diagnosis, the judgments about student
performance in relation to those
criteria help to identify students'
strengths and weaknesses. And, of
course, diagnosis is, how do you rely
on the strengths to overcome the
weaknesses? To provide feedback,
we need to help students know how
to do better. Judgments about how
they're doing in relation to those performance criteria will reveal that to
them and to their teacher.
We need to keep good records so
that we can track student changes
over time. But [in the formative]
context, there's really never a need
to assign a letter grade in this context. My admonition to teachers is,
while the learning is going on, and
we're diagnosing and providing
that good feedback, the grade book
remains closed.
There is a variation on this theme
that is important. That is, can formative evidence ever serve summative purposes? And the answer is
clearly, "yes." If I have information
from the formative application of assessment in my classroom that reveals a higher level of achievement
than was revealed by, for example,
a unit final exam, then it's my responsibility to use the best evidence
I have to determine, for example, a
student's report-card grade. So yes,
http://www.edweek.org/go/formativeassessment-digital http://www.edweek.org/go/formativeQA http://www.edweek.org/go/formativeVideos
Education Week - November 11, 2015

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