Luke Witham & Hunter Allen

Professor Alexander

Educational Psychology

December 8, 2019

Comparative Analysis of Formative and Summative Assessment

As soon to be classroom teachers, we have recently learned about classroom assessment.

There are two main types of assessment: formative and summative. Both of these forms of

assessment can be employed in various ways. However, there is a large debate among educators

over which form of assessment is better. In the classroom assessments can be manifested into

several things and there is a multitude of ways a teacher can use them. For us, we both believe

that there is no one type of assessment that is good enough to be used alone, but rather an

appropriate mix and implementation of the two is the best method of classroom assessments.

Formative assessment is not a new concept in education; however, it is new to education

in the sense that educators and schools are now just starting to accept and embrace formative

assessment as a regular tool in the classroom. In fact, formative assessment and other

constructivist ideas of in class instruction have been around since the early 1930’s when

educators like John Dewey tried to implement his methods into a classroom. For many teacher’s

veteran teachers who were not exposed to formative assessment in their training have a hard time
understanding its value and how to correctly use, in some cases they do not even know how to

define formative assessment. According to the Formative Assessment for Students and Teacher

(FAST) and State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) the formal

definition of formative assessment is “Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and

students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust on going teaching and learning to

improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes” (Popham). Essentially, this

means that formative assessment is any exercise the teacher uses in class to check on the day-to-

day progress of their students. In the typical classroom, teachers and instructors use summative

testing to evaluate their students learning, most of the time this consists of high stakes testing

that is carries a high point value. Also, these large summative tests are given at the end of an

instructional period and only measure what the student retains under pressure, with these types of

tests there is no room for improvement and no way address issue after the fact. Formative

assessment addresses both of these problems in fact, there are many benefits for both the teacher

and students when formative testing is used in the classroom.

There are several ways a teacher can implement formative assessment into their

classroom without wasting valuable class time. Not only is it time efficient but it is also cost

effective. An easy and free option is to implement formative assessment is to write admit and

exit questions on the board for students to answer and then go over as a class. Another, cheap

route to take is to have students create portfolios or keep journals, then have one on one

conferences with each of the students. All of these methods take very little time and and money

to implement but the impact they will have unquantifiable. (Dodge)

First, the students. Use of formative assessment in the classroom has the greatest affect

on our students. Formative assessment is often called assessment for learning, this is because
formative assessments are given during instruction throughout the entire lesson. The National

Council of Teachers of Mathematics claims “Formative assessment that occurs within and

between instructional units (medium cycle assessment) as well as within and between lessons

(short-cycle assessment) has been shown to improve students’ achievement. Formative

assessment across marking periods, quarters, semesters, or years (intervals of four weeks to one

year) has not been shown to improve students’ achievement”, this is helpful, because it allows

teachers and student support faculty to recognize and respond, to areas in need of improvement,

and potential problems, immediately; therefore, students are not carrying on through the lesson

with a supposition that is incorrect or incomplete. Formative assessment allows students to

answer these three questions: Where am I trying to go? How do I close the Gap? And, Where am

I now? To begin, formative assessment gives students the clear and concise instructions and a

direct path to their learning targets. Learning is overall easier when students understand the goal

they are trying to achieve, the purpose and value of achieving it. This part of formative

assessment should be happening constantly, the teacher needs to keep in constant contact with

the student and make sure they are always giving feedback (Chappuis, Stiggins). Next,

assessment for learning allows students to monitor their own progression towards there learning

goals; additionally, students then have the ability to take initiative over their learning to make the

necessary adjustments to improve their learning. Because of this, the learning goals become

more personal to the students and they will be motivated to accomplish these goals because they

are the students (Hanover Research) Lastly, students gain the ability to ascertain where they are

in their path to achieving their learning target. When talking to a former high school teacher of

mine I asked her “How does using daily formative assessment help your students?” She

responded with
 “The most critical part of using daily check-ins with the students is that, it puts their

progress into perspective for them. Before, they may have thought that they were all set

and ready to move on, but after talking and doing a few problems with me they realize

that there may be a few things they need to work on. There are times when I am checking

in with student and realize that they are completely lost and then we go directly into

intervention mode and make sure they get back on track”.

Formative assessment also provides help to the teachers and student support staff. When

classrooms only use summative testing, there is little to no communication between the teachers

and their students on a direct level. In these classrooms, there is a typical pattern starting with the

first half of the instructional process, usually a quiz of some sort, the second half of the

instruction and then a final topic test. These cycles leave absolutely no room for improvement.

During a teacher/student check in or a portfolio review the teacher is able see and understand

their students for understanding and proficiency. One of the most important aspect of strong

formative assessment use, is that students work at their own individual pace, but the teacher has

control over how far they are able to go. Using formative assessment, the teacher can see and

analyze all of their students work; therefore, students can not continue on and start work that

they are not ready for. This prevents students being pushed deeper into the lesson when they are

either confused or have incorrect suppositions that will lead to more problems later. With

formative assessment, if a student needs help on a specific topic or section of the instruction the

teacher can intervene immediately (Carnegie Mellon University).

Even though formative assessment brings a multitude of positive benefits to the

classroom, it does have its own short comings. Based on experience and talking to my friends,

the fact that formative assessment carries little to no point value and does not affect the students’
final grade can be a turn off. For students like myself who did not always need extra help or extra

practice, formative assessment always seemed like a waste of my time. Because it never carried

any grade value, I treated it like busy work and put almost no effort into it. This can be a problem

when students get older and almost entirely exclusive to high school aged students. In addition, it

takes a well-trained and committed professional teacher to implement formative assessment that

will help. If a teacher is not fully committed to the formative assessment, they are giving the

students will also lose motivation and treat it as a task not and opportunity. Last, teachers need to

be entirely objective with their students. In some cases, teachers will be more critical and puch

harder on students who misbehave in class as a form of indirect punishment, or they will be to

lackadaisical with student who perform above average in class. These two outcomes produce

their own slew of problems that would eventually help derail the entire class (Reddy).

Summative assessments offer a lot of great advantages for students. Although almost all

summative assessments are painful for students to take and teachers to prepare and grade them.

They are some very good skills that the students will need. The most important thing that it does

is it offers a way of motivation for the students. It forces them to want to pay attention and get all

the knowledge that they can if they only have one shot at getting to where they want to be. This

will make the students become more motivated then if they know they can get as many chances

on a test or project as they want. Giving students as many chances as they want teaches them

nothing. In the real-world people may get more than one chance to get things right, but is that

what we want to be teaching our students? That you can get as many chances as you want to,

because everyone will allow it. But, in the real-world employees don’t get as many chances as

they want, and most of the time they get two. One is like a warning and the other is when an

employee gets fired. We should want all of our students to try their best and stop at nothing but
success. Not tell them it’s okay they didn’t do well on a test, and that they can do better on the

next ten tests that they take. Summative assessment also gives very good insight to the teacher.

The teacher can tell how well he or she is doing by the grades that their students are getting on

the test. If all of the students are doing very well on the assessments then the teacher know they

are getting their job and the students are retaining the information. It also allows the teacher to go

back and see what they did wrong and where the students fell off track when the majority of the

students do not do so well on an assessment. For the students, it gives them some type of grade

that they can reflect on when they are done. Like if a student got a bad grade, they could look

back and see where they went wrong and work to fix it so that it never happens again. It can also

work the other way, when a student does very well on a test and they can use the same study

methods that they used the first time to make sure they continue to do well.

Some of the problems that can come with summative assessment is that teachers can push

the students to far. Because a lot of the teachers depend on how well their students do in order to

keep their job. There is always the temptation to push the students much further than they should.

Making them do hours of studying and homework assignments in order to make it so the students

get good grades on the school and state tests. Another problem is that some students are not good

at testing or presenting. So how can a teacher accommodate these students in summative

assessment. This where summative assessment fails, because a student’s grade is based on how

well they do on a particle test or project. When a grade like this is on a summative assessment

there is no room for error. Lastly, summative assessment is always done at the end when the

material is done being covered. This leaves no room for the students to reflect and see how well

they did. When the assessment is at the end of the material there is almost no room for going

back. If the assessment was done during the material, there is still room for learning to be done
and the students to figure out where they went wrong. It is hard for students to go back and

figure out just where they went wrong when there were weeks of material covered. When if they

find out where they went wrong when it happens they can go back and find out just where they

went wrong and fix it right then.

One way to make sure that summative assessment is accurate is make the test after the

material is covered in class. It seems like an obvious thing, but many teachers use the same tests

every year, even though the same material is not covered every year. This makes the test

extremely hard on the students who have no idea what is going to be on the tests. By making a

new test every year, the teacher can make sure that they have only the material that they covered

on the test. Another way to make summative assessments easier on your students is to find what

the strengths of your students are. If you have a class of students who are very good and

speaking and presenting. Don’t make them sit down for a one hundred question test. Instead,

make them do a project or write a report and bring it back to class to present their work.

Overall, these two forms of assessment, could not be more different. Individually, they

present their own unique qualities, and can both be implemented in various way. However, in our

opinion neither is better than the other in the classroom. We believe that when used correctly and

together, both the students and the teachers benefit the most.
Carnegie Mellon University. “Formative vs Summative Assessment - Eberly Center - Carnegie

Mellon University.” Formative vs Summative Assessment - Eberly Center - Carnegie

Mellon University, https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-

summative.html.

Chappius, Stephen, and Richard J. Stiggins . “Classroom Assessment for Learning .” Educational

Leadership, vol. 60, no. 1, Sept. 2002, pp. 40–43.

http://hssdnewteachers.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/50394085/Classroom.Assessment.for.L

earning.Chappuis.pdf.

Dodge, Judith. “What Are Formative Assessments and Why Should We Use Them?” Scholastic,

Scholastic , https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/what-are-

formative-assessments-and-why-should-we-use-them/.

Hanover Research, “The Impact of Formative Assessment and Learning Intentions on Student

Achievement”. August 2014

Foster, Karen. Personal Correspondence, November 30, 2019

Popham, W. James. "Formative Assessment why, what, and Whether." Transformative

Assessment, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008, pp. 1-22.

GaleEbooks,https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3248000008/GVRL?u=thomascollib&sid

=GVRL&xid =c2e135e6. Accessed 8 Dec. 2019.

Reddy, Krishna, and Krishna Reddy. “Formative Evaluation: Importance, Advantages &

Disadvantages.” WiseStep, 29 July 2019, https://content.wisestep.com/formative-

evaluation-importance-advantages-disadvantages/.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “What is Formative Assessment?”. 2007.