Assessment to Promote Learning Pages 39-43 Helping Students Understand Assessment

Formative assessments promote learning when they help students answer three questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? and How can I close the gap? During the last decade, many schools have begun to emphasize formative assessment. As teachers work to develop short-cycle or common assessments and engage in data-driven decision making, they typically remain in the central decision-making role. This approach reflects the underlying assumption that teachers control learning. Although teachers must create the conditions for learning, however, students ultimately decide whether they feel capable of learning and whether they will do the work. Therefore, students are equally important users of formative assessment information. The research tells us why. Necessary Components of Formative Assessment In their 1998 synthesis of research, Black and Wiliam reported that formative assessment produced significant learning gains, with effect sizes between 0.4 and 0.7. They noted, however, that in schools achieving these gains, students were the primary users of formative assessment information. In such schools