Letter From The Principal: What Bricks Have To Do With Assessments

If someone handed you a brick and asked how you would use it, what would be your response?

One response might be that you would use it for building something. Another response might be that you would use it as a doorstop, or you might even say you would use it as a paperweight.

How we use the brick determines its purpose.

This is the same for assessments.

How they are used determines their purpose (e.g., either formative or summative).

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. In other words, formative assessment is assessment FOR learning.

Formative assessment is considered practice; therefore, students receive feedback rather than grades on this work.

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing the student’s work against a standard or benchmark. Summative assessment is assessment OF learning.

Take for example the Driver’s Test. To prepare for this assessment a student driver practices driving with an adult in the car. This is considered formative assessment. The student driver receives feedback on his/her driving and makes the necessary adjustments. The instructor also makes adjustments based on the student driver’s progress.

The test, itself, is considered a summative. The student driver will receive a score at the end that shows how well he/she performed.

There are times; however, when the score received on the summative driving test isn’t high enough. When this happens, the Driver’s Test becomes a formative assessment—providing the student driver with additional feedback on how to make adjustments and improvement.

Suddenly the summative becomes a formative. It’s all in how the assessment is used.