Formative Assessment: Why, What, and Whether

Popham, W. J. (2008). Formative Assessment: Why, What, and Whether. Julie Houtz, Transformative Assessment (pp. 1-22). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Deve. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108018/chapters/Formative-Assessment@-Why,-What,-and-Whether.aspx

This article defines and explains in detail the definition of benchmark or formative assessments, and the reasons for utilizing them in the classroom. The author defined these assessments by stating that, “Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students' status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics” (Popham, W. J., 2008).

The author mentions using formative assessments to adjust instruction based on mastery of the material. By adjusting instruction, this in turn improves student learning.  These assessments can also be used as a predictor of performance on future state assessments. The author cites a research study that was performed by two British researchers, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam that gave evidence-based research in support of using formative assessments in the classroom. These two researchers based their evidence on a nine year project that encompassed 681 publications that were diverse, carried out by researchers in several nations, involved students from the age of 5 to undergraduate and involved a variety of different fields (Popham, W. J., 2008). They found that the effect size was between .4 and .7 in favor of classrooms that had formative assessments. In order to make that number understandable, they explained that a gain of .7 in a 41 nation international study of mathematics would raise the rank of a middle ranging country to one of the top 5 (Popham, W.J., 2008). The study concluded by stating that teachers must use these assessments in his or her own manner.