Educational Leadership - November 2009

What Research Says About…
Tracy A. Huebner
Balanced Assessment

Every summer, when state departments of education release their test scores, educa- tion leaders pay close attention to see how their school or district ranks. Classroom teachers, on the other hand, are often frustrated that these data arrive when the tested set of students has already moved on, months after the results would have been useful for guiding instruction.

The fact is that assessments may be useful for
one purpose but worthless for other important
instructional purposes. Education leaders now
understand that a variety of meas-
ures are needed to accommodate a
variety of goals. The challenge for
schools is designing a balanced
assessment system using the
strengths of summative, interim,
and formative assessments to
address instructional, accounta-
bility, and learning needs. (See
“The Quest for Quality” by
Stephen Chappuis, Jan Chappuis,
and Rick Stiggins on p. 14 of this
issue for more on balanced
assessment systems.)

What We Know Experts have described the distinct uses and limitations of summative, formative, and interim assessments (Perie, Marion, Gong, & Wurtzel, 2007). Summative assessments—administered at the end of a unit, semester, or year—cannot provide teachers with timely information on how to teach differently or what content to reteach to move students toward mastery. Large-scale summative assessments may be useful for ranking and comparing schools, districts, or programs, and they may yield disaggregated data that identify content areas in which particular groups of students are struggling. Their results may be useful in helping schools adjust the instructional program for the future. However,

these standardized tests are not a good assessment choice for addressing students’ current academic needs.

Formative assessments, in contrast, are administered frequently by teachers during an instructional unit to assess student learning as it happens. Used effectively, formative assessment provides information that helps the teacher adjust instruction to improve learning. Formative assessments take many forms. For example, a teacher might observe a small group of students

Assessments may be
useful for one purpose
but worthless for other
important instructional
purposes.

discussing a character’s internal conflict in the novel Of Mice and Men or read students’ hypotheses about dominant genes in their science notebooks, and then use these formative measures to identify students who would benefit from further instruction on the concept.

Interim assessments fall between formative and summative assessments in both timing and purpose. Usually administered on a regular, preplanned schedule, they evaluate student progress on common content standards, or benchmarks, that students must master to be on track to reach end-of-year learning goals. Unlike summative assessments, however, interim assessments take place in time for teachers to adjust instruction to address any identified gaps in student mastery.