Richard Stiggins on Formative Assessment

In this Education Week interview with Catherine Gewertz, assessment expert Richard Stiggins identifies three common misconceptions:

• That annual standardized tests improve teaching and learning (only formative assessments have the potential to do that, says Stiggins);
• That formative assessment is an event (it’s actually a day-to-day process to give students and teachers a stream of information for next steps in learning);
• That assessment results often discourage students (“Good formative assessment keeps students believing that success is within reach if they keep trying,” says Stiggins). 

Ideally, he continues, formative assessments do three things: (a) clarify the learning target for students; (b) tell them where they are with respect to the target; and (c) provide insights on how they can close the gap. “Do you see where the locus of control resides?” asks Stiggins. “It’s with the student.” 

Should formative assessments be graded? Students’ progress should be monitored and shared with them, says Stiggins, using clear performance criteria and student-friendly feedback. Sometimes formative assessments provide more-accurate information on students’ skills, knowledge, and understanding than formal assessments. But he’s against grading day-to-day checks for understanding: “My admonition to teachers is, while the learning is going on, and we’re diagnosing and providing good feedback, the grade book remains closed.” 

Stiggins describes his observation of a high-school English teacher working with her students to establish criteria for a term paper they’d just been assigned. First she gave students a copy of an exemplary term paper, had them identify what made it so effective, and had them synthesize the characteristics. Then she passed out a poorly written paper and went through a similar exercise. “OK,” she said, “let’s talk about the differences between these two papers. What was it about the good paper that differentiates it from the bad paper?” This discussion, and small-group work that followed, produced a consolidated range of quality on several essential criteria they should be aiming toward in their own papers – their own rubric!

“Q&A: Misconceptions About Formative Assessment” An interview with Richard Stiggins by Catherine Gewertz in Education Week, November 11, 2015 (Vol. 35, #12, p. S4-S5), http://bit.ly/20Xi9xU; 

From the Marshall Memo #612