Connecting the Dots:
Formative, Interim, and
Summative Assessment
G. Gage Kingsbury, Dylan Wiliam, &
Steven L. Wise, NWEA
11th Annual MARCES/MSDE Conference
University of Maryland, October, 2011
The purpose of education
Thomas Jefferson
“the ideal of offering all children the opportunity to succeed,
regardless of who their parents happen to be” (Hirsch,
2006, p 30)
George Washington Carver
“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of
freedom.”
Malcolm Forbes
“Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an
open one.”
Assumption: The mission of
an educational system
To provide each student with an opportunity
to learn what life has available, to help
them decide what interests them, and to
help them learn as much as they can to
take them in their desired direction.
Stakeholders and Assessment
Needs
• Students
– Am I doing well enough?
– Can I reach my goals?
• Teachers
– What is next for this student?
– How am I doing?
• Parents
– Is my child growing well?
– How is my child doing relative to his/her peers?
• School Administrators
– Is my school doing as well as it could?
– Is my school meeting requirements?
Stakeholders and
Assessment Needs (cont.)
• Legislators
– Are we creating a strong workforce?
– Will our next generation be ready to lead?
• The general public
– Is my money being spent well?
– Can I hire good employees?
Assessment tools for
education
• Processes that allow a teacher to capture learning
as it occurs (“formative”; ”diagnostic”)
• Procedures that allow the identification of student
achievement and growth relative to the trait of
primary interest during instruction (“interim”;
“benchmark”).
• Procedures that allow identification of
achievement at the end of a course of study
(“summative”; “evaluative”).
Using these tools together
• Currently, the primary focus of federal regulation
is summative/evaluative assessment.
• This focus creates an imbalance in the
classroom.
• We need to find balance, so each assessment
tool can help us provide the educational
outcomes we seek.
• Each approach provides only a portion of the
information that stakeholders need
• Here we will describe the characteristics of each
assessment tool, and how they might work
together to provide more or the needed
information
The Annual Achievement
Assessment (U.S. Version)
• Assesses student performance towards
the end of a school year.
• Is primarily designed to make evaluative
statements about groups of students.
• Measurement accuracy in the aggregate is
crucial.
• Can be designed to make statements
about individual students, but this requires
longer tests.
Characteristics
• Neither detailed content coverage nor fullsample testing is required.
• For most purposes, immediacy of results
is neither required nor available.
• Information shelf life (i.e., for how long can
these data support the intended
inferences?) is long.
• Needed frequency of data collection low
Stakeholder Needs
• School administrators can use results to
chart trends in student performance.
• Legislators can use results to identify
funding needs.
• The general public can use results to
gauge the effectiveness of the educational
system.
• Teachers may be able to use results to
help in curriculum planning for future
cohorts.
Unmet Needs
• Students: typically little to no actionable
information about their instructional needs
• Teachers: little information about the
instructional needs of this year’s individual
students.
• Parents: little information about their
student’s academic growth.
Interim Assessment
• Focus on student achievement and growth
relative to a trait of primary interest during
instruction.
• Assesses student performance at multiple
points during a year of instruction.
• Designed to support inferences about the
academic growth of individual students.
• Measurement accuracy for the individual
student is crucial. CAT is useful here.
Characteristics
• All students are assessed.
• Immediacy of results is important.
• Can be interpreted normatively or relative
to long-term goal (i.e., college readiness).
• Information shelf life is short.
• Frequency of data collection is moderate.
Stakeholder Needs
• Students can gauge their growth relative to
normative or aspirational goals.
• Parents can assess their child’s growth.
• Teachers can use results to make instructional
decisions for the current cohort.
• School administrators can aggregate student
results to assess trends in growth and to
evaluate teacher effectiveness.
• Legislators can use results to evaluate policy.
• The general public can use results to gauge the
effectiveness of the educational system.
“Formative” Assessment
• Processes that allow a teacher to capture
learning as it occurs, and to make
appropriate instructional adjustments.
Characteristics
• All students are assessed.
• Immediacy of results is important.
• Interpreted in terms of instructional
decisions.
• Information shelf life is short.
• Frequency of data collection is high.
Which of These is Formative?
A. District science supervisor uses test results to plan
professional development workshops for teachers.
B. Teachers doing item-by-item analysis of 5th grade math
tests to review their 5th grade curriculum.
C. A school tests students every 10 weeks to predict which
students are “on course” to pass the state test in March.
D. Three-fourths of the way through a unit test.
E. Students who fail a test on Friday have to come back on
Saturday.
F. Exit pass question: “What is the difference between mass
and weight?”
G. “Sketch the graph of y equals one over one plus x squared
on your mini-white boards.”
Formative Assessment:
An Inclusive Definition
An assessment functions formatively to the
extent that evidence about student
achievement is elicited, interpreted, and
used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to
make decisions about the next steps in
instruction that are likely to be better, or
better founded, than the decisions they
would have taken in the absence of the
evidence that was elicited.
Mapping Out the Terrain
Annual
Timescale
Interim
Weekly
Daily
Hourly
Academic
promotion
Benchmark
Common formative
assessments
Before the endof-unit tests
Exit pass
Hinge-point
questions
Instructional
Guidance
(“formative”)
High-stakes
End-of-course accountability
exams
Growth
End-ofunit tests
Describing
Individuals
(“summative”)
Function
Institutional
Accountability
(“evaluative”)
Hinge-point questions
Sheena leaves a wooden block, a glass flask, a woolly hat,
and a metal stapler on a table overnight. What can she say
about their temperatures the next morning?
A.
B.
C.
D.
The stapler will be colder than the other objects
The woolly hat will be warmer than the other objects
The temperatures of all four objects will be different
The temperatures of all four objects will be the same
Connecting (some of) the dots
Development of science skills in eighth grade
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Use of laboratory equipment
Metric unit conversion
Density calculations
Density applications
Density as a characteristic property
Phases of matter
Gas laws
Communication (graphing)
Communication (lab reports)
Inquiry skills
Homework 2
✓
Communication
(report)
✓
✓
✓
Module test
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
Homework 4
Final exam
Communication
(graph)
✓
Homework 3
Laboratory 2
Gas laws
✓
Phases of
matter
Density
properties
✓
✓
Homework 1
Laboratory 1
Density
calculations
Metric units
Equipment
Assessment matrix
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
Stakeholder Needs
• Students can gauge their growth relative
to normative or aspirational goals.
• Parents can assess their child’s growth.
• Teachers can use results to make
instructional decisions for the current
cohort.
• School administrators can aggregate
student results to assess trends in growth
and to evaluate teacher effectiveness.
Unmet Needs
• Teachers: different teachers may be acting
effectively in their own classrooms, but
their judgments may differ from those of
their colleagues
• School administrators need to know that
achievement scores are comparable from
class to class.
• Parents need assurance that the grades
reported to them are meaningful.
Connecting (more of) the dots
• Common assessments allow teachers to
compare their judgments about the
meaning of standards, and thus align their
judgments.
• Although these instruments are often
called “common formative assessments”
their main use may be in aligning teachers’
judgments for summative purposes.
Teacher’s role
Learner’s role
Summative assessment
A community of practice
in which teachers share
a construct of quality
Understanding the
assessment intentions,
so they produce relevant
evidence
Formative assessment
Teachers possess an
anatomy of quality
Learners become
members of the same
community of practice of
which their teachers are
already members
A strong assessment system
• will provide students with immediate feedback
concerning their progress
• will provide teachers with information concerning
their student’s needs
• will provide teachers with information useful in
long-range instructional planning
• will provide school administrators with
information about the school’s progress
• will provide the public with information about
student achievement and growth
A strong assessment system
• needs to be designed to have an impact in the
classroom
• needs to communicate needed information
clearly to teachers and students
• needs a strong measurement scale to measure
growth
• needs normative, criterion, and content
references to make meaning of performance
• needs a strong measurement design to measure
growth well
A combined system
• Before school starts, an interim assessment
allows accurate class placement, suggests a
place to start for each student, and sets
individual growth targets.
• During the first term formative assessment
processes allow the teacher to adjust the
original placement and help each student start to
move forward.
• At the end of the first term, an interim
assessment gives each teacher and student a
first look at achievement during the year and
progress toward growth targets.
A combined system
continued
• During the second term formative assessment allows
each teacher to adjust content as the students progress,
and allows regrouping of students using teams of
teachers.
• Toward the end of school, the summative assessment
identifies the overall achievement of the students in the
class to help determine what there is to celebrate, and
what might be done better in subsequent years.
• At the end of school, an interim assessment gives each
teacher and student a look at achievement during the
year and attainment of growth targets.
Thank you for your attention.
Questions?
gage.kingsbury@nwea.org
dylanwiliam@mac.com
steve.wise@nwea.org