The formative purpose: assessment must first promote learning CCSSO 35th Annual National Conference on Large-Scale Assessment San Antonio, TX; June 2005

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The formative purpose assessment must first
promote learningCCSSO35th Annual National
Conference on Large-Scale AssessmentSan Antonio,
TX June 2005

• Dylan Wiliam
• ETS
• dwiliam_at_ets.org

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Formative is a function, not a kind of
assessment

• The same assessment can serve both formative and
  summative functions
• Whether an assessment is formative doesnt depend
  on
• Who wrote the assessment
• Who administers the assessment
• Where it is administered
• Who scores the assessment

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Functions of assessment
coarser

• For evaluating institutions
• For describing individuals
• For supporting learning
• Monitoring learning
• Whether learning is taking place
• Diagnosing (informing) learning
• What is not being learnt
• Forming learning
• What to do about it

finer
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Assessment must first promote learning

• Evidence collected for formative purposes can be
  aggregated to support summative inferences
• Evidence collected for summative purposes can
  rarely be disaggregated to support learning

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Formative assessment
Assessment for learning is any assessment for
which the first priority in its design and
practice is to serve the purpose of promoting
pupils learning. Such assessment becomes
formative assessment when the evidence is
actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet
learning needs. Black et al, 2002
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Effects of formative assessment

• Several major reviews of the research
• Natriello (1987)
• Crooks (1988)
• Black Wiliam (1998)
• Nyquist (2003)
• All find consistent, substantial effects,
  typically of the order of an extra 4 months
  growth per year

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Aspects of formative assessment
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Kinds of formative assessment

• Long-cycle FA
• 6 to 10 week cycle
• Medium-cycle FA
• 1 to 3 week cycle
• Short cycle FA
• 5 seconds to 2 day cycles

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Long-cycle formative assessment

• Focus curriculum alignment
• Advantages
• Straightforward to implement
• Visible response to NCLB challenges
• Disadvantages
• Feedback arrives too late to affect learners
• Broad focus
• Poor reliability at standard-level
• Better for monitoring than diagnosis
• Limited evidence of impact on student achievement

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Short-cycle formative assessment

• Focus pedagogy
• Advantages
• Feedback can impact practice
• Narrow focus (high reliability at standard level)
• Potentially formative
• Strong evidence of impact on student achievement
• Disadvantages
• Lack of visibility as response to mandates
• Subtle changes to practice

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Two approaches to change
increasingrigor
increasing utility/responsiveness
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Kinds of coherence

• Alignment of practices with assessments
• Narrow sense better test preparation
• Broad sense focus on big ideas
• Teacher judgments contribute to high-stakes
  assessments
• Evidence elicitation
• Evidence identification

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A question
Under what conditions can teachers judgments
about the achievement of their own students make
a significant contribution to high-stakes
assessment?