Summative assessment

Hello everyone,

Summative assessment is the sort of assessment that you give at the end of everything. It is the summation of the semester; it is the final.

When you give a summative assessment, there's is nothing you can do to use it to correct your teaching. It is the end of whatever you have been teaching. Summative assessments may help you plan for next year, or--if you had it all together--they have previously helped you to plan this year backwards, but there is nothing more you can do for this year's kids after the final test.

Setting up a good summative assessment is a difficult prospect.

First, you must be clear about what you intend to test. Are you testing your students on their skills or their knowledge? Do you want to know how well they read, or how much they know about something? How important is the skill of writing to your summation? Do you think it is important that your students' abilities in English affect their scores? How much will it affect their score if they know something but express it badly? Can you test them without requiring a performance?

The answers to those rhetorical questions will vary according to subject. In English, I test my students' reading and writing abilities as much as their knowledge of figurative language and literary movements. In drama, I test their speaking and listening abilities more than their cold reading. If I were teaching math, I might distinguish between the decoding essential to word problems and the understanding necessary for the order of operations. In social studies, it may be slightly more important that they understand history than that they be able to write about history, but I would want them to write. In science it is important that they understand certain concepts, but it is critical that they know not to hurt themselves in their contacts with science

You need to carefully construct your assessments so that they truly assess what you have taught and what you want the students to know. Never assess what you haven't taught; avoid testing fine points on anything but recent material; never try to trick them.

Some summative assessments are performance based. If the performances are group performances, you must set up the rubric to make every member of the group equally accountable. If the performances are individual, you must set up things in your classroom so that individuals are comfortable performing. (It's too bad when someone fails a final out of shyness, not lack of knowledge.)

I think high school students ought to have a final. They need that pre-college preparation. Finals in high school should be cumulative, but students will not perform well if you test them on intricate details of something you taught four to six months ago. Give them a general idea what will be required; give them time to review; don't try to trick them or sneak up on them.

And please, please, please don't let them cheat. There is nothing wrong with failing someone who cheats, but set up the final day and the final test in such a way that cheating is difficult, and make it very clear that you won't permit it. Don't back down on your threatened consequences for cheating, but try not to put your class in a position that requires heavy consequences.

It's possible to write a test that is difficult or impossible to cheat on, but it takes time and effort to do it. Long essays, for example, are very difficult to cheat on, but also very difficult to correct. Multiple forms of the same test, with the questions in different orders, are do-able with current software, but they are also difficult to correct. Seating the students far apart from each other is the best way, but some classes have too many students. Think it through and plan for possible cheating.

I personally don't think a test should make the difference between passing and failing for an average, motivated student. It may make the difference for marginal students--I don't mean them. Plan the test's value so that it can't drop or raise anyone's grades too much unless you are using performance-based assessment, and the performance represents the culmination of a long period of work.

You have one week to get your test ready, then one week to review for it. The third week from now is finals week at the high school. Think carefully, and plan to give a meaningful, summative assessment.

Jeff Combe