Why should we use formative assessments, such as benchmark tests?

We analyze SOL assessments to find out how the program did. Now, I know the children change in third grade, and eighth grade, and eleventh grade, year to year, but you analyze your SOL assessments to determine if your program is effective with generation after generation of students.

But when you want to help students, you need formative assessments, such as nine weeks tests, which are kind of mid-stream tests. That gives you data on how that student is doing at that point in time. You take a kind of the temperature of how they’re doing on skill deficits. You take a kind of the temperature how teachers are doing on their pacing and whether they’re aligned in terms of teaching the essential skills. And when you get that data, you need to make mid-course correction, such as an intervention program. Talk to a teacher about her pacing; or check with the textbook to see if it, in fact, is covering the essential skills.

So the formative assessments are kind of a mid-course correction opportunity.