Evidence
Meta-analysis of studies into formative assessment have indicated significant learning gains where formative assessment is used, across all content areas, knowledge and skill types, and levels of education. Marzano states:
"Recall the finding from Black and Wiliam’s (1998) synthesis of more than 250 studies that formative assessments, as opposed to summative ones, produce the more powerful effect on student learning. In his review of the research, Terrance Crooks (1988) reports that effects sizes for summative assessments are consistently lower than effect sizes for formative assessments. In short, it is formative assessment that has a strong research base supporting its impact on learning." (Marzano, 2006, p. 9).Researchers have concluded that standards-based assessments are an effective way to “prescribe instruction and to ensure that no child is left behind” (Marzano, 2006 p. 13).
The strongest evidence of improved learning gains comes from short-cycle (over seconds or minutes within a single lesson) formative assessment, and medium to long-term assessment where assessment is used to change the teacher's regular classroom practice.
Read more about this topic: Formative Assessment
Famous quotes containing the word evidence:
“Yet in spite of all they sang in praise of their Elizas reign, we have evidence that poets may be born and sing in our day, in the presidency of James K. Polk.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)
“Generally there is no consistent evidence of significant differences in school achievement between children of working and nonworking mothers, but differences that do appear are often related to maternal satisfaction with her chosen role, and the quality of substitute care.”
—Ruth E. Zambrana, U.S. researcher, M. Hurst, and R.L. Hite. The Working Mother in Contemporary Perspectives: A Review of Literature, Pediatrics (December 1979)