High Quality Assessment Blog Posting

Formal assessment is a multitude of formal and informal assessment procedures.  It can take many forms, but it always emphasizes quality of student work over quantity, giving guidance over grades, avoids comparing students, emphasizes understanding rather than just presenting information, encourages multiple iterations of the assessment cycle, and provides feedback that engenders motivation and leads to improvement.  One of the best practices in formative assessment is providing feedback, which is a research-based strategy.  Formative assessment would be used to gather feedback to guide improvement, such as when a teacher makes constructive comments on a paper the student has turned in.  A summative assessment is used to evaluate success or proficiency, such as a students final grade on a test.