Four Types of Assessment and How They Can Be Used

In this Education Week item, Sarah Sparks compares the key characteristics of different approaches to gathering and using student learning data:

• Formative learning assessment – Teaching students how to set goals for their learning, identify their growth toward those goals, evaluate the quality of their work, and identify strategies to improve. 

• Formative diagnostic assessment – Frequent on-the-spot checks of students’ progress to pinpoint learning problems and identify strategies to improve teaching and learning.

• Benchmark or interim assessment – Periodic during-the-year tests (perhaps quarterly) to compare students’ understanding or performance in a curriculum unit (or a semester) against a set of uniform standards.

• Summative assessment – Year-end (or end-of-course) tests to compare students’ performance against a set of uniform standards. 

“Types of Assessments: A Head-to-Head Comparison” by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, November 11, 2015 (Vol. 35, #12, p. S3), http://bit.ly/1QHx4aV; these two Education Week videos http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/formative-assessment-videos.html show fourth-grade teachers modeling formative assessment strategies. 

From the Marshall Memo #612