If you want a full account of formative assessment on its own, see formative assessment. This page is about the contrast: what separates it from summative assessment, why mixing them up causes trouble, and how to decide which one a given task is meant to be.
The short version
Formative assessment is gathered to guide what happens next. Summative assessment is gathered to judge what has been learned. A common way to put it: when the cook tastes the soup, that is formative, and when the guests taste the soup, that is summative. The tasting is the same act. What differs is whether there is still time to add salt.
Where the terms come from
Michael Scriven introduced the words in 1967 to distinguish ways of evaluating educational programs, formative for improving a program while it is still being built and summative for judging it at the end. Benjamin Bloom and colleagues carried the distinction to student learning in a 1971 handbook. It became far more widely known after Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published their 1998 review Inside the Black Box, which argued that improving formative assessment in classrooms was one of the most promising places to put effort.
Side by side
| Formative | Summative | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Decide what to teach or fix next | Judge what was learned |
| When | During learning, often daily | At the end of a unit, term or course |
| Stakes | Low or none | Counts toward a grade |
| Who uses the result | Teacher and student, right away | Teacher, student, family, school |
| Typical forms | Warm-up questions, quick checks, practice sets, conversation | Unit tests, final exams, projects, portfolios |
| Success looks like | You changed your next lesson | The record is fair and accurate |
The same quiz, used two ways
A teacher gives twelve questions on fractions to end a unit. Used summatively, it goes in the gradebook, the unit closes, and the class moves on. Used formatively, it is given midway through, ungraded, and the teacher sorts the results into three piles: who has it, who nearly has it, and who needs a different explanation. The questions have not changed, only what happens afterward. A summative test that is handed back after the unit is over cannot be formative for that unit, because nobody has any time left to act on it.
Common mistakes
- Grading everything. Once a quick check counts, students stop treating it as practice and start protecting their average.
- Calling a quiz formative and then using it for the grade. Students notice, and they trust the next one less.
- Collecting data you never act on. A pile of exit tickets that nobody reads is neither.
- Only summative. If the first evidence of a gap is the unit test, the gap has had weeks to grow.
- Assuming formative means feedback is automatically helpful. Feedback can backfire, especially when it focuses on the person instead of the task.
The honest limits
The two-box picture is a simplification. Many assessments sit in between, a midterm that is graded but also drives reteaching, for example. Some educators prefer the phrases assessment for learning and assessment of learning, which are roughly the same idea. The research supporting formative assessment is strong in general, but the size of the benefit depends on how good the feedback and the follow-up are, and some of the early claims about its effect have been questioned. Doing it badly does not help.
How this shows up in ClassSense
Most of what ClassSense does is formative. Practice, games and quiz questions update a student's mastery on a skill with every answer, and the mastery states (Struggling, Developing, Approaching, Mastered) are not grades. A skill reads Mastered only after at least five answers at about 85 percent accuracy. The Students grid shows the class at a glance so you can reteach before the unit test.
For the summative side, the Create Content tab can generate an assessment as a .docx. You give it and grade it yourself, and the score does not flow back into ClassSense, since there is no gradebook sync and official grades are transferred by hand. Be careful about turning mastery states into a report card grade without a decision of your own. See the pages on mastery-based grading and building a unit assessment.
Common questions
What is the main difference between formative and summative assessment?
Purpose. Formative assessment is used to guide teaching while learning is happening. Summative assessment is used to judge what has been learned at the end. The same task can serve either purpose.
Can a test be both formative and summative?
Partly. A graded midterm can also show you what to reteach, but students tend to treat anything graded as high stakes, which reduces its usefulness as a learning tool.
Should formative assessments be graded?
Usually not, or only lightly. Grading shifts students toward protecting their score instead of using the feedback.
Is ClassSense formative or summative?
Mostly formative: practice and games update mastery per skill continuously. It can generate an assessment document you use as a summative test, but you grade it yourself.