G. Gage Kingsbury, Dylan Wiliam,

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Connecting the DotsFormative, Interim, and
Summative Assessment

• G. Gage Kingsbury, Dylan Wiliam, Steven L.
  Wise, NWEA
• 11th Annual MARCES/MSDE Conference
• University of Maryland, October, 2011

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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).

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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

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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.

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Characteristics

• Neither detailed content coverage nor full-sample
  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

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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.

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Unmet Needs

• Students typically little to no actionable
  information about their instructional needs
• Teachers little information about the
  instructional needs of this years individual
  students.
• Parents little information about their students
  academic growth.

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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.

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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.

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Stakeholder Needs

• Students can gauge their growth relative to
  normative or aspirational goals.
• Parents can assess their childs 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.

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Formative Assessment

• Processes that allow a teacher to capture
  learning as it occurs, and to make appropriate
  instructional adjustments.

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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.

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Which of These is Formative?

1. District science supervisor uses test results to
   plan professional development workshops for
   teachers.
2. Teachers doing item-by-item analysis of 5th grade
   math tests to review their 5th grade curriculum.
3. A school tests students every 10 weeks to predict
   which students are on course to pass the state
   test in March.
4. Three-fourths of the way through a unit test.
5. Students who fail a test on Friday have to come
   back on Saturday.
6. Exit pass question What is the difference
   between mass and weight?
7. Sketch the graph of y equals one over one plus x
   squared on your mini-white boards.

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Formative AssessmentAn 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.

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Mapping Out the Terrain
Timescale
High-stakes accountability
Academic promotion
End-of-course exams
Annual
Benchmark
Growth
Interim
Common formative assessments
End-of-unit tests
Weekly
Before the end-of-unit tests
Daily
Exit pass
Hourly
Hinge-point questions
Instructional Guidance (formative)
Describing Individuals (summative)
Institutional Accountability (evaluative)
Function
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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?
• 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

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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

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Assessment matrix
Equipment Metric units Density calculations Density properties Phases of matter Gas laws Communication (graph) Communication (report)
Homework 1 ?
Homework 2 ? ?
Laboratory 1 ? ? ?
Homework 3 ?
Module test ? ? ?
Laboratory 2 ? ? ? ? ?
Homework 4 ?
Final exam ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
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(No Transcript)
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Stakeholder Needs

• Students can gauge their growth relative to
  normative or aspirational goals.
• Parents can assess their childs 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.

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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.

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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.

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Teachers role Learners 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
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A strong assessment system

• will provide students with immediate feedback
  concerning their progress
• will provide teachers with information concerning
  their students needs
• will provide teachers with information useful in
  long-range instructional planning
• will provide school administrators with
  information about the schools progress
• will provide the public with information about
  student achievement and growth

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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

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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.

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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.

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Thank you for your attention. Questions?gage.k
ingsbury_at_nwea.orgdylanwiliam_at_mac.comsteve.wise_at_n
wea.org