8: Formative and Summative Assessment (Slavin, Ch. 13)

Description:

Effective instruction is built on clear learning objectives that guide the lesson planning process and allow students to monitor their own progress. Instructional objectives should be specific, measurable, and adapted to the subject matter (Slavin, 2018).  At the end of a unit of study, teachers will assess student learning through a cumulative  test or performance task (summative assessment), but student achievement will be increased if formative assessment is used throughout the teaching of the content leading up to a summative assessment. Formative assessments provide the teacher and the student with important information about what students are learning, and it should be used to adjust lesson plans to accommodate for necessary reteaching, clarifying misconceptions, and individual scaffolding for students who are struggling.  When the time comes to formally assess a student’s mastery of the content for an entire unit, two key ideas should guide the process: students should be formally tested after the learning, not as it is developing, and students should be provided multiple opportunities to demonstrate what they learned (Slavin, 2018). When final grades are reported, it should be done in a way that provides a fair and accurate assessment of student progress.

Analysis:

Using standards and instructional objectives to guide instruction is important because it allows the teacher to know exactly what students have learned, and it helps to ensure that students in different classes or even different schools are learning the same content. When teachers use the “backward planning process” they are able to analyze exactly what skills students need and plan their lessons around them (Slavin, 2018). It is equally important that students have a clear understanding of the learning objectives so that they can self-monitor and respond to feedback from the teacher. This backward planning process also encourages teachers to design activities that will develop student understanding beyond memorization to higher order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating (Slavin, 2018). 

Formative assessment measures student progress as the learning is happening. It has been called “assessment for learning”; whereas summative assessment is “assessment of learning” (Heick, 2019). Formative assessment allows the teacher to revise and adjust her plans to meet the unique needs of her students, and it gives students a better idea of where they need to improve. Formative assessment can be done in a variety of ways: Some teachers use exit tickets or “tickets out the door” which typically happen at the very end of class and ask a few key questions about the content from the day’s lesson. Other formative assessments are happening throughout the lesson when the teacher conducts “quick checks for understanding”, conferences with students, or observes them engaged in a group or individual activity. Activities that are completed for homework can also provide information about what a student is learning and how they are applying it. All of this information is useful IF the teacher looks closely at it and actually uses it to adjust instruction. Formative assessment is a waste of time if it is not used as a tool to improve student achievement. According to Absolum, Gray, and Mutchmor, “there should not be any assessment at all that is not directly useful to the students and teachers in supporting learning”(2010, p.116). 

Eventually, it is necessary to implement a formal assessment of what students know, understand, and can do. Summative assessments also require careful consideration to make sure they are measuring the right things and to ensure they are administered fairly. The summative assessment should be directly connected to the learning objectives outlined at the start of the unit. The results of a summative assessment can allow teachers to compare students to a set standard (criterion-referenced) or to other students (norm-referenced) (Slavin, 2018). In addition, assessments can help teachers evaluate their own practice and instructional strategies. If the teacher “taught” the content, but a majority of the students failed the assessment, there is either a problem with the assessment or a problem with the  instruction. Creating fair and reliable assessments takes time and training. It’s important that “none of your students are advantaged or disadvantaged because of their different backgrounds” (Slavin, 2018 p. 355). One thing that helps to avoid this is to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning, such as performance tasks or portfolios (Slavin, 2018).

The natural conclusion to assessments in the classroom is grades on a report card, and this too requires careful consideration. Slavin describes the purpose of grading this way, “Grades should communicate at least the relative value of a student’s work in a class. They should help students to understand better what is expected of them and how they might improve” (Slavin, 2018 p.373-374). It is important for teachers to be clear about their grading practices so that students and parents understand the results and how they can use the information.  Teachers should make sure that grades are an accurate reflection of what the student has learned.

Reflection:

In high school, grades matter. There is no way around it, and teachers must make sure that their grading practices are useful  in improving and reflecting  student achievement. Our lesson plans and our gradebooks are structured around formative and summative assessment, and  these are key parts of my instructional practice; however, I have encountered two main challenges to this process. 

The first challenge is regarding the time it takes to adjust lesson plans based on formative assessment. Our unit plans are designed around six calendar weeks with a summative assessment at the end. The content is tightly packed, and this leaves little time for “reteaching”. We use “backward planning” to make sure we have addressed the skills required by the standards, but it is difficult to remain flexible or to engage students in the planning process as suggested in Clarity in the Classroom (Absolum, Gray & Mutchmor 2010). They do suggest a different approach, which involves identifying the “big ideas” of the unit and placing the focus on them. This ensures that although students learn at different rates and have varying levels of prior knowledge, they are all exposed to the most important content (Absolum, Gray & Mutchmor, 2010).

The second challenge that arises in how formative and summative assessments are recorded as grades in the gradebook. There is a heated debate about the use of zeros for missing work. This is an important consideration because many of our students have low motivation and fail to complete a large number of assignments. This is often the number one factor in a student’s failing grade. I feel a real ethical struggle with the recommendation of giving a minimum grade of 50 to balance the grading scale, but I find Slavin’s idea of changing the grading scale to 0,1,2,3,4 (2018 p. 378) very appealing. I think as more schools consider a standards-based grading, which sounds similar to Slavin’s “performance grading” (2018), we will continue to have this conversation. Ultimately if it means a greater consideration for how grading practices can accurately reflect student learning and enhance student achievement, I think we are moving in the right direction.

References

Absolum, M, Gray, J., & Mutchmor, M. (2010) Clarity in the Classroom: Using Formative 

Assessment for Building Learning-Focused Relationships. Portage and Main Press.

Heick, T. (2019, December 12). The Difference Between Assessment of Learning and 

Assessment for Learning. Teachthought.

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice (12th ed.). Pearson 

Education.