Formative and summative assessment

Formative assessment and summative assessment share a common goal of evaluating student knowledge.

• Formative assessment is intended to inform and guide adjustments to instruction on an ongoing basis.
• Summative assessment is intended to monitor progress and evaluate the overall success of both students
and instructional programs on a long-term basis.
Other distinctions stem from this difference in purpose:
• Formative assessments are often (though not always) informal and either embedded in classroom work or closely aligned to specific instructional activities, while summative assessments are more formal and separate from classroom instructional activities.
• Formative assessments are primarily intended to inform teachers and students, whereas summative assessments are intended to inform a broader range of stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers,administrators, the community, and various levels of institutional accountability.
• Formative assessments can take many different forms, all of which contribute to an understanding of a student’s learning, while summative assessments typically consist of a few standardized measures. Commonexamples of formative assessments include informal reading inventories, running records, oral questioning in a group setting, and oral or written
retellings of what students have read.