Student Formative Assessment

The purpose of this overview is to provide an understanding of the research base on professional development and its impact on student achievement, as well as offer recommendations for future teacher professional development.

To produce better outcomes for students two things are necessary: (1) effective, scientifically supported interventions (2) those interventions implemented with high integrity.  Typically, much greater attention has been given to identifying effective practices.  This review focuses on features of high quality implementation.

Evidence-based practice is a framework for decision making.  Even with high quality evidence there are likely sources of uncertainty that practitioners must confront.

Response to Intervention is a framework for determining the intensity of services that are necessary for a student to benefit from instruction. This paper addresses some of the misconceptions about RtI.

The NAEP Data Explorer provides national and state results for all main subject areas assessed, including mathematics, reading, writing, and science. Results have been produced for the nation and participating states and other jurisdictions since 1990, and for selected urban districts (on a trial basis) since 2002.

Effective ongoing assessment, referred to in the education literature as formative assessment or progress monitoring, is indispensable in promoting teacher and student success. Feedback through formative assessment is ranked at or near the top of practices known to significantly raise student achievement. For decades, formative assessment has been found to be effective in clinical settings and, more important, in typical classroom settings. Formative assessment produces substantial results at a cost significantly below that of other popular school reform initiatives such as smaller class size, charter schools, accountability, and school vouchers. It also serves as a practical diagnostic tool available to all teachers. A core component of formal and informal assessment procedures, formative assessment allows teachers to quickly determine if individual students are progressing at acceptable rates and provides insight into where and how to modify and adapt lessons, with the goal of making sure that students do not fall behind.

This book is compiled from the proceedings of the sixth summit entitled “Performance Feedback: Using Data to Improve Educator Performance.” The 2011 summit topic was selected to help answer the following question: What basic practice has the potential for the greatest impact on changing the behavior of students, teachers, and school administrative personnel?

This paper is based on the simple idea that students’ educational achievement is affected by the effort put in by those participating in the education process: schools, parents, and, of course, the students themselves.

This book is compiled from the proceedings of the sixth summit entitled “Performance Feedback: Using Data to Improve Educator Performance.” The 2011 summit topic was selected to help answer the following question: What basic practice has the potential for the greatest impact on changing the behavior of students, teachers, and school administrative personnel?

The aim of this paper is to examine a variety of features of research that might account for mixed findings of the relationship between teachers' subject matter knowledge and student achievement based on meta-analytic technique.

This report breaks out key steps in the school identification and improvement process, focusing on (1) a diagnosis of school needs; (2) a plan to improve schools; and (3) evidenced-based interventions that work.

The authors investigated the hypothesis that treatment acceptability influences teachers' use of a formative evaluation system (curriculum-based measurement) and, relatedly, the amount of gain effected in math for their students.

The goal of the proposed study was to determine whether third-grade
students’ (n = 74) transcriptional skills and gender predicted their writing fluency growth in response to a performance feedback intervention.

This article reviews the decision rules for curriculum based reading scores. It concluded the rules were most often based on expert opinion.

Just as an athlete needs effective practice to be able to compete at high levels of performance, students benefit from formative practice and feedback to master skills and content in a course. At the most complex and challenging end of the spectrum of summative assessment techniques, the portfolio involves a collection of artifacts of student learning organized around a particular learning outcome.

This is a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment. Several studies show firm evidence that innovations designed to strengthen the frequent feedback that students receive about their learning yield substantial learning gains.

This paper theorizes that variations in learning and the level of learning of students are determined by the students' learning histories and the quality of instruction they receive.

Research and experience tell us very forcefully about the importance of assessment in higher education. It shapes the experience of students and influences their behaviour more than the teaching they receive. The influence of assessment means that ‘there is more leverage to improve teaching through changing assessment than there is in changing anything else’.

The goal of this paper is to estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement.

This paper examines New York City elementary school teachers’ decisions to stay in the same school, transfer to another school in the district, transfer to another district, or leave teaching in New York state during the first five years of their careers.

By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of .03 standard deviations.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) assesses teaching practice based on videos and essays submitted by teachers. They compared the performance of classrooms of elementary students in Los Angeles randomly assigned to NBPTS applicants and to comparison teachers.

This report provides a practical “management guide,” for an evidence-based key indicator data decision system for school districts and schools.

Peer mediated intervention (PMI) is a promising practice used to increase social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). PMIs engage typically developing peers as social models to improve social initiations, responses, and interactions.

A rationale and model for changing assessment efforts in schools from simple description to the integration of information from multiple sources for the purpose of designing interventions are described.

The purpose of this overview is to provide an understanding of the research base on professional development and its impact on student achievement, as well as offer recommendations for future teacher professional development.

We know that students should participate constructively in the classroom. In fact, most of us probably agree that a significant portion of a student’s grade should come from his or her participation. However, like many teachers, you may find it difficult to explain to students how you assess their participation.

Curriculum-based measurement is a type of formative assessment.  It is used to screen for students who are not progressing and to identify how well students are responding to interventions.

This article reviews the advantages of curriculum-based measurement as part of a data-based problem solving model.

To produce better outcomes for students two things are necessary: (1) effective, scientifically supported interventions (2) those interventions implemented with high integrity.  Typically, much greater attention has been given to identifying effective practices.  This review focuses on features of high quality implementation.

a mini-series from School Psychology Review about Academic Enablers to Improve Student Performance: Considerations for Research and Practice. 

This article describes using formative assessemnt as a foundational tool in a data-based problem solving approach to solving social behavior problems.

This systematic review synthesizes the findings from 30 studies thatcompared the performance of students at schools using single‐trackyear‐round calendars to the performance of students at schools usinga traditional calendar.

This is a comprehensive literature review of the topic of Implementation examining all stages beginning with adoption and ending with sustainability.

This article compares and contrasts mastery level measures (grades) with curriculum-based measurement (global outcome measure).

In this meta-analysis of studies that utilize formative assessment the authors report an effective size of .7.

This meta-analysis investigated the effects of formative evaluation procedures on student achievement. The data source was 21 controlled studies, which generated 96 relevant effect sizes, with an average weighted effect size of .70. The magnitude of the effect of formative evaluation was associated with publication type, data-evaluation method, data display, and use of behavior modification. Implications for special education practice are discussed.

Curriculum-based measurement is recommended as an assessment method to identify students that require special education services.

This study examines the effect of formative assessment on teachers’ instructional planning.

The objective of this study was to investigate the differential effectiveness of teaching methods on students’ academic performance. Using the inferential statistics course, students’ assessment test scores were derived from the internal class test prepared by the lecturer. 

High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, while standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement. The present study challenges that conventional view. The study finds that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, but of four-year college outcomes as well.

In this article, we examine assessment and accountability in the context of a prevention-oriented assessment and intervention system designed to assess early reading progress formatively.

The authors contrast the functions of high stakes testing with prevention-based assessment.  The authors also show the value of using formative assesment to estimate performance on high stakes tests.

Curriculum based measures were used to to evaluate student progress across multiple years following the introduction of selected evidence-based practices.

This quantitative review examines 20 studies to establish an effect size of .71 for the impact of “metacognitive” instruction on reading comprehension.

The authors study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement.

Hattie’s book is designed as a meta-meta-study that collects, compares and analyses the findings of many previous studies in education. Hattie focuses on schools in the English-speaking world but most aspects of the underlying story should be transferable to other countries and school systems as well. Visible Learning is nothing less than a synthesis of more than 50.000 studies covering more than 80 million pupils. Hattie uses the statistical measure effect size to compare the impact of many influences on students’ achievement, e.g. class size, holidays, feedback, and learning strategies.

This study examines the effects on early reading skills of three different methods of
presenting material with computer-assisted instruction.

Some of the specific reasons for the success or failure of retention in the area of reading were examined via an in-depth study of a small number of both at-risk retained students and comparably low skilled promoted children

Responsiveness to intervention (RTI) is being proposed as an alternative model for making decisions about the presence or absence of specific learning disability. The author argue that there are many questions about RTI that remain unanswered, and radical changes in proposed regulations are not warranted at this time.

This study examined the extent to which the reading instructional practices learned by a
cohort of teachers who participated in an intensive, yearlong professional development
experience during the 1994-1995 school year have been sustained and modified over time.

Like we consider our formative years when we draw conclusions about ourselves, a formative assessment is where we begin to draw conclusions about our students' learning. Formative assessment moves can take many forms and generally target skills or content knowledge that is relatively narrow in scope (as opposed to summative assessments, which seek to assess broader sets of knowledge or skills).

In this paper, a self-regulated flipped classroom approach is proposed to help students schedule their out-of-class time to effectively read and comprehend the learning content before class, such that they are capable of interacting with their peers and teachers in class for in-depth discussions.

This study examines the relationship between two dominant measures of teacher quality, teacher qualification and teacher effectiveness (measured by value-added modeling), in terms of their influence on students’ short-term academic growth and long-term educational success (measured by bachelor’s degree attainment).

This article provides a summary of measuring the fiscal impact of practices in education
educational policy.

Using a randomized control trial in 11 Chinese primary schools, we studied the effects of pay-for-grades programs on academic cheating. We randomly assigned 82 classrooms into treatment or control conditions, and used a statistical algorithm to determine the occurrence of cheating. 

This monograph attempts to synthesize and interpret the extant research from the last 4 decades on the impact of schooling on students' academic achievement.

This is a study of classroom management on student engagement and achievement.

This report offers recommendations for the implementation of standards-based reform and outlines possible consequences for policy changes. It summarizes both the vision and intentions of standards-based reform and the arguments of its critics.

This research report presents the findings of this formative and summative research effort.

How did U.S. students perform on the most recent assessments? Select a jurisdiction and a result to see how students performed on the latest NAEP assessments.

To investigate the relationship between students’ achievement and various contextual factors, NAEP collects information from teachers about their background, education, and training.

How did U.S students perform on ht most recent assessment? 

This non-technical brochure provides introductory information on the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The brochure also provides information about the online resources available on the NAEP website.

Twelfth-graders’ performance in reading and mathematics improves since 2005. Nationally representative samples of twelfth-graders from 1,670 public and private schools across the nation participated in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

The Data Explorer for the Long-Term Trend assessments provides national mathematics and reading results dating from the 1970s.

Percentages of students meeting state proficiency standards and performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level, by subject, grade, and state: 2009

In this new national writing assessment sample, 24,100 eighth-graders and 28,100 twelfthgraders engaged with writing tasks and composed their responses on computer. The assessment tasks reflected writing situations common to both academic and workplace settings and asked students to write for several purposes and communicate to different audiences.

This study examined the impact of EDP on student achievement in Pennsylvania schools
from 2006-2010. It updates and extends a prior evaluation (Nunnery, Ross, & Yen, 2010a) study
of this same cohort from 2006-2009.

This volume of PISA 2009 results looks at the progress countries have made in raising student performance and improving equity in the distribution of learning opportunities. 

Volume II of PISA's 2009 results looks at how successful education systems moderate the impact of social background and immigrant status on student and school performance. 

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, which take place every three years, have been designed to collect information about 15-year-old students in participating countries.

This first volume of PISA 2009 survey results provides comparable data on 15-year-olds' performance on reading, mathematics, and science across 65 countries. 

This research brief is one in a series for the Back on Track Study that presents the findings regarding the relative impact of online versus face-to-face Algebra I credit recovery on students’ academic outcomes, aspects of implementation of the credit recovery courses, and the effects over time of expanding credit recovery options for at-risk students.

CHILDREN take one of two types of standardized test, one ''norm-referenced,'' the other ''criteria-referenced.'' Although those names have an arcane ring, most parents are familiar with how the exams differ.

This article provides an overview of contextual factors across the levels of an educational system that influence implementation.

This book looks at research and theoretical models used to define educational effectiveness with the intent on providing educators with evidence-based options for implementing school improvement initiatives that make a difference in student performance.

Scores went up in all grades and subjects this year on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). But how much depends on how you look at them. 

A critical review of reading programs requires objective and in-depth analysis. For these reasons, the authors offer the following recommendations and procedures for analyzing critical elements of programs.

The purpose of this study was to determine if a typical third-grade boy and fifth-grade girl and a boy with learning disabilities could benefit from the combined use of Direct Instruction (DI) flashcard and math racetrack procedures in an after-school program. The dependent variable was accuracy and fluency of saying basic multiplication facts.

Effective ongoing assessment, referred to in the education literature as formative assessment or progress monitoring, is indispensable in promoting teacher and student success. Feedback through formative assessment is ranked at or near the top of practices known to significantly raise student achievement. For decades, formative assessment has been found to be effective in clinical settings and, more important, in typical classroom settings. Formative assessment produces substantial results at a cost significantly below that of other popular school reform initiatives such as smaller class size, charter schools, accountability, and school vouchers. It also serves as a practical diagnostic tool available to all teachers. A core component of formal and informal assessment procedures, formative assessment allows teachers to quickly determine if individual students are progressing at acceptable rates and provides insight into where and how to modify and adapt lessons, with the goal of making sure that students do not fall behind.

Response to Intervention depends on regular, routine monitoring of student progress.  This paper describes a multi-component approach to monitoring progress.

This article reviews the efficacy of curriculum-based measurement as a methodology for enhancing student achievement in reading and math.  Variables that contribute to the benefit of curriculum-based measurement are discussed.

In order to determine effectiveness of instruction teachers require data about the effects of instruction.  With these data teachers are able to make adjustments to instruction when progress is not being made.

Keeping RTI on Track is a resource to assist educators overcome the biggest problems associated with false starts or implementation failure. Each chapter in this book calls attention to a common error, describing how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to false starts, how to determine when you're in one, and how to get back on the right track.

This report describes the first of a series of researches that will attempt to characterize the performance of New Jersey's public school system.

This literature review examines the impact of various instructional methods

This study evaluated the effects of performance feedback on increasing the quality of implementation of interventions by teachers in a public school setting.

The author makes the case that rapid assessment can identify struggling students who can then be provided intensive instruction so their performance on high stakes tests is improved.

The author reports data suggesting that the systematic use of formative assessment can reduce the pressure on teachers that they experience with high stakes testing.

The author compares the effectiness of comprehensive school reform relative to rapid progress monitoring.  Progress monitoring results in much greater benefit than comprehensive school reform.

The authors examine the effectiveness of replacing low performing teachers relative to using formative assessment as a means of increasing student outcomes.

This paper conducts an analytic literature review to examine the use and operationalization of the term in multiple academic fields

This overview presents a general definition of self-regulated academic learning and identifies the distinctive features of this capability for acquiring knowledge and skill.