Common Core and the Promise of Formative Assessment

The value of formative assessment has been recognized by the consortiums designing the Common Core. The problem is that in their vision students will take formative tests between the scheduled summative assessments. After decades of research on formative assessment and abundance of definitions, this approach is arguably not formative assessment. Definitions of formative assessment include the words on-going process, embedded, feedback loop, student engaged, and responsive.  

Don’t be fooled. There is no such thing as a formative test! You can’t give a test on a moment’s notice when it becomes apparent that the meaning of .053 or the global changes that occurred as a result of 9/11 are not fully clear to students. At that very moment, formative strategies such as signaling or feathers and salt can illuminate points of confusion. This is far more effective than waiting for the formative interim “test” in four weeks.

We must not miss the opportunity that minute by minute formative assessments, from the start of a lesson to its conclusion, can provide.  Improvement comes when students understand expectations, receive immediate feedback, get advice on next steps, and take responsibility for learning. Don’t be misled into thinking that a one-shot measure can supply the same insights as an ongoing process of gathering evidence and responding meaningfully.

Robo Assessment

The creators of the new robo-readers claim that they can grade thousands of essays in the blink of an eye. These automated readers can scan documents and use algorithms to count sentence length, check verb agreement, and measure sentence complexity. But can they really assess? Grading is about giving numerical ratings and rankings to student work.  Assessment is about using the data to monitor progress, identify gaps in learning, and guide instructional planning.

Creative work, original thoughts, synthesis of ideas are difficult enough for teachers to assess even when they know the content and the learning targets. Beautifully written narratives and exchanges of idea are important outcomes that robots may not be able to assess for nuance and inference. And, if teachers are going to have robots read and grade student work, then the teachers will not be monitoring growth, providing feedback, and responding with appropriate interventions.

With the new common core writing requirements, teachers will need to help students express ideas, support their ideas with facts, and write for a target audience. While a robot may be able to measure writing techniques, it takes a teacher to analyze ideas and assess growth.