Formative Assessment in Elementary Science: A Multi-level Path Analysis

This presentation covers a large-scale, multi-state, randomized controlled study of the effects of adding formative assessment tools and strategies to an elementary school curriculum. Schools and teachers within them were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The treatment was reconceptualized as one element of formative assessment, the availability of quality tools. Results showed that availability of these tools led to significant improvement in teachers’ content knowledge and significantly impacted students’ science learning.